The Week In Review

Capcom Disses Clergy Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles is pretty old hat if you’re a gamer; zombies, raccoons, umbrellas, nothing we haven’t seen before. For the clergy however, it’s a much different story as three British religious leaders criticized the game for promoting interest in the occult. Capcom, being the master of diplomacy that it is, has gone to every length to reassure the Bishop Mark Bryant of Jarrow, Archdeacon Brian Smith and the Rt. Rev. John Goddard that they have nothing to worry about: “This is scaremongering and typical religious hysteria. You cannot blame society’s ills on video games. It’s just absurd.” Masterfully handled, I’m in awe. (link) Miyamoto’s Myriad Marios ‘It’s-a me-a, Mario’ is a phrase that most gamers will be familiar with, although that’s largely because they’ll have heard it eighty bajillion times; but would it surprise you to learn that the surfeit of stout, nay portly, plumbers is deliberate? In a discussion between Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto and head honcho Satoru Iwata, Miyamoto confessed his original plan for the character: “Well, I called him “Mr. Video”. My plan was to use the same character in every video game I made … I thought the way Hitchcock cropped up in all the films he directed was really cool! (laughs).” Thankfully, Miyamoto-san saw sense and didn’t put him in every game he would go on to make, but considering that Mario has tried his hand being a go kart driver, golfer, and doctor, it’s pretty much just splitting hairs by this point. (link) Litigious Agoraphobe Sues Again Erik Estavillo is well on his way to becoming a gamer meme, as he adds another feather to his cap of litigation. Not content with simply suing Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft for a bevy of weird and wonderful reasons, he’s going after Activision-Blizzard because he fears that World of Warcraft may kill him and others who suffer from mental illness, because it alienates gamers from each other. It gets better though, as he’s called Winona Ryder and the guitarist from Depeche Mode as witnesses because he believes that they understand alienation. But Estavillo genuinely ill, or is he simply a pawn in an elaborate game? Our very own Malygris puts forward the idea that Estavillo might be in employ of EA’s marketing department and this might all just be an elaborate ad for Dante’s Inferno. Sure, it sounds crazy, but it’s not impossible… (link) Law Devil vs Mewtwo: FIGHT! Australian Attorney General Michael Atkinson plans to challenge the OFLC’s decision to allow the sale of Modern Warfare 2 with a MA15+ rating. According to the Great Law Devil, the OFLC is playing fast and loose with the rules in order to accommodate the gaming industry. “Expecting game designers to be responsible by not glorifying terrorism will always lead to disappointment,” he told Gamespot Australia, “I worry about any game that encourages gamers to perpetrate extreme violence and cruelty on screen, but this game [Modern Warfare 2] allows players to be virtual terrorists and gain points by massacring civilians.” According to the Classification Review Board, the body to which the Law Devil would have to complain, Atkinson will not get any special treatment because of his position, which I totally believe. Honest. In related news, would you like to buy some magic beans? (link) Left 4 and 4 and 4 and 4 Dead The four in Left 4 Dead is more than just lazy ‘text speak’ on Valve’s part, it also represents a philosophy, an ideology if you will, of four survivors alone against the endless zombie horde. Once you start to tinker with that, well, let’s just say the zombie hordes are much less frightening when you bring fifteen well armed buddies along: “Rochelle has startled the witch, no, not that Rochelle, that Rochelle. Oh, never mind, the witch is dead now anyway. Anyone hurt? No? Good. Company, move out!” Hit the link for a video of exactly what Left 16 Dead looks like. (link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-01-23” author: “John Hartley”

The Lady Doth Protest Too Much If you’re looking forward to Heavy Rain so you can get your interactive mac on, you’re in for a disappointment as Quantic Dream CEO David Cage has made it clear that the sex scenes in the game are not gratuitous. “It’s definitely not porn,” he said. “We don’t intend to push the boundaries and be ultra-realistic in every detail. It’s about real characters having emotions and doing what adults do when they fall in love.” Which leads us to… (link) David Cage is Sometimes Hard to Believe David Cage may claim that Heavy Rain isn’t about boobies, but the North American box art for the game suggests otherwise. Featuring an attractive woman in a very tight tank top vest thing very prominently in the center of the box, three guys, some water and an origami duck – or possibly a horse – the art is busy, confusing and uninspiring, with the European version being a lot simpler and more evocative. Sorry North America, looks like you were unlucky on this one. (link) Avatar Hates Ubisoft What’s good for the goose isn’t always good for the gander, not if the gander is Ubisoft and we’re taking about Avatar. James Cameron might be making a killing from the the movie, but the spin-off game seems to be killing the French publisher, so much so that it is mentioned specifically in a third quarter fiscal update where the company significantly revised its projected sales targets for the year, probably of the heading “Whoops, that could have gone better”.(link) Yahtzee’s Mana Potions Taste Like Rum! Along with a few friends, The Escapist’s own Yahtzee is opening up a bar in Brisbane where the games are free, even if the drinks themselves are not. Called ‘The Mana Bar’ the establishment will run competitions and host guest speakers from the world of gaming. With its fairly small, fifty person capacity, the Mana Bar is likely to be a crowded place on most nights, especially considering Yahtzee’s very large fan base. Hit the link for a video of the man himself talking about the place. (link) Rockstar Wives Speak Out Apparently channeling EA from six years ago, Rockstar San Diego is allegedly treating its workers rather badly, at least according to their significant others. In an open letter from the “Determined Devoted Wives of Rockstar San Diego Employees”, the Rockstar employees are working increasingly long hours with very little management support. While the letter contains no specific demands, but promises legal action should the situation remain unchanged. (link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-01-27” author: “Vera Montgomery”

Square-Enix and PopCap Slay the Beast of Productivity Have you ever wondered what would happen if heroin and cocaine had a baby? The result would probably be the new game from Square-Enix and PopCap, Gyromancer. The game looks reminiscent of the already addictive Puzzle Quest, with the mechanics of PopCap’s Bejewelled Twist. Expect to see cities devoid of human life and for nature to reclaim the streets when this game gets released. (link) Sony’s Sales See-Saw It’s has been a funny old week for Sony. On the one hand it announced that the PS3 Slim has sold 1,000,000 units, but on the other hand it’s had to deal with the fact that several retailers have announce plans to boycott the PSPgo, which seemed to have rattled the company enough for it to offer three free games to PSP owners who upgrade to the new hardware. (double link) Making Sabotage Easy! In a move that should please our very own Susan Arendt, Pandemic Studios has announced that they want everyone who plays The Saboteur to be able to complete it, regardless of their level of skill. “We balance the game on the Hardcore mode,” said lead designer Tom French. “If we can play through it on Hardcore then that’s a good balance for us and we just tune it down.” (link) There Can Be Only One… More “I am Juan Sánchez Villalobos Ramírez, Chief metallurgist to King Charles V of Spain. And I’m at your service” The exciting and often unintentionally hilarious Highlander is a movie that has been treated very, very badly. While seemingly sequel-proof, that didn’t stop movie executives from making not one, not two, not even three, but four sequels, two spin-off series TV shows and even a Saturday morning cartoon. The next indignity? A reboot, which will either be the final nail in the coffin or a shot in the arm to a franchise that perhaps should have been put out to pasture a long time ago. (link) Eroge Game Can See Your Wang Love Death 4 is a upcoming Japanese eroge that will be able to recognise the shape of an erect penis. There, that’s the weirdest thing I’m likely to have to type ever. I have nothing to follow that. For the love of Samus, the game can see your wang! Click the link for details.(link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-02-12” author: “Daniel Yee”

Backwards Compatibilty? Pshw! Who wants that? Sony’s John Koller has stated unequivocally that the PS3 would not be getting backwards compatibility; saying that despite the noise people were making about it, they weren’t buying the console to play old games on. Maybe it’s just me, but it seems a little disingenuous to say that people weren’t buying the PS3 to play old games when the feature was removed in 2007. It’s probably some super-secret business thing that us mortals wouldn’t understand (link) How Much? I Could Buy A Real Mewtwo For That! Cod Mewtwo is in danger of going down as the ‘gougiest game in history’, as it was announced that the price would be increased on the PC version of the game to bring it in line with its console brethren. No doubt console owners are pleased that the pricing is ‘fair’, but for PC gamers like me who aren’t paying any royalties to a hardware manufacturer, the move just reeks of corporate greed. I’m in the UK too, so Samus only knows how much I’m going to have to pay… (link) Would You Like Some Stereotypes With That? The Japanese arm of McDonald’s has found itself at the center of a controversy as the non-profit organization FRANCA attacked an ad campaign recently run by the company. FRANCA asserts that the depiction of the white McDonald’s customer – known as Mr James – as nerdish and ignorant is damaging to progress made on the behalf of foreigners seeking equal treatment in Japan and should never have been run in the first place. (link) What Comes Before Rocktober? ZEPPTEMBER! People who have been waiting with bated breath for the release of Brutal Legend In October can breathe just a teensy bit easier, because there is a demo on the way, great news for those amongst us eager to take it up to 11. Not bad going for a game that nearly didn’t get released at all. And before you start complaining, I know ‘Zepptember’ is weak. You think you can do better? Be my guest. ‘Tis The Age of Dragons! Here’s a question for you: you’re on a quest and you have the opportunity to get your hands on a holy relic that can heal any wound, but some of your comrades are worshippers of the religion that venerate the relic and would be more than a little annoyed if you swiped it. Do you take the artifact or do you leave it where it is? This is just one of the difficult choices that BioWare is going to force you to make in Dragon Age: Origins as revealed to the lovely and talented Susan Arendt. Hit the link for more details. (link) Xbox 360 Experiences Epic Fail A study has shown that more than half of all Xbox 360s have experienced the dreaded Red Ring of Death. This is far and away the highest rate of equipment failure of any of the current generation of consoles and the news will no doubt be like a gas can chucked into a fire with the amount of flames it will generate. The weird thing about all this is that Microsoft still somehow manages to inspire a great deal of brand loyalty, just proving the old adage “Gears of War 2 can make a man forget himself.” Ok, I may have made that up… (link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-03-14” author: “Frank Schmidt”

IGN has been broadsided by a cease & desist attack from Robotech creator Harmony Gold over a promotional trailer for the recently announced MechWarrior game. Harmony Gold’s issue seems to be the use of certain designs “borrowed” from Robotech/Macross when MechWarrior was getting its start as a tabletop wargame back in the early 80s. It’s been years since any fan has even seen one of these designs, as the game’s creator FASA stopped using them to prevent potentially devastating lawsuits. But here’s the thing, the new game is supposed to be set during the Third Succession War, which people more interested in these things than I am inform me is when these particular types of mech roamed the earth. Can a compromise be reached with Harmony Gold, or is the new game finished before it’s even begun? (link) OnLive Goes Kind of Live! OnLive, the service that – if you believe the hype – may just spell doom for the console giants has entered a state that has certain characteristics of an open beta. Those who applied ahead of time got a free pass in, but according to a post on the OnLive blog, there are a handful of keys left to the beta that are on a first come, first served basis. Of course, by the time you read this, they might all have gone, so you better hurry up. Go! RUN! THEY’RE COMING! FLEE FOR YOUR LIVES! Sorry about that…flashbacks… (link) Evil Genius Bashes Video Games There are two kinds of people that design giant robots: videogame designers and diabolic masterminds. After Gundam creator Yoshiyuki Tomino’s comments, it’s clear that he’s not the former. In Tomino’s mind, games are little more than brightly-colored wastes of electricity with no lasting cultural significance. In his defense, he sees a correlation between games and his own industry: “People working on CG have become caught up with how to use these tools, but do not give a thought on creating content that will be relevant 10 years from now,” Tomino said. “As long as we remember to ask ourselves the question, I believe that a hint towards the next step can be seen” (link) Langdell Quits IGDA Tim Langdell has quit his position on the board of directors of the IGDA, pre-empting his possible expulsion. Langdell has been accused of using his position in the IGDA as a weapon against anyone who dared to use the name “Edge”. Langdell issued a statement claiming that he had the best interests of the organization at heart and that his departure was not an admission of wrongdoing. Regardless of what his reasons might be, Langdell’s detractors must be pretty pleased right now. (double link!) Move Over Goofy, We’ve Got Captain America Now Finally, probably the biggest news of the week is that the ever-so-wholesome Disney has bought comic-book giant Marvel. We must now prepare ourselves for the announcements that the Jonas Brothers will be joining the Avengers and the Punisher will be getting a new sidekick in the form of Hannah Montana. Of course it also means that Deadpool might be in the next Kingdom Hearts, so it’s not all bad… (link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-02-27” author: “Jamie Sonoda”

Why It Was Old Man Virtalo, All Along! Tero Virtalo, CEO of RedLynx, makers of the game Trials, pulled a Kaz Hirai this week, by telling the gaming public something that it really didn’t need to hear. At a conference, he admitted to adding Trials to torrent sites, but a version that lacked the online scoreboards. His logic was that the lack of scoreboards would entice pirates into buying the full version, because scoreboards are exactly what software pirates care about. Yep, no sarcasm from me there, nosireebob. (link) No One Does Odd Quite Like Japan Obama and Putin meet in the the Oval Office, they lock eyes over the Presidential desk and then tumble into a passionate embrace. No, this isn’t some weird post-Cold War slash fiction, it’s part of a new eroge called My Girlfriend is the President, which tells the story of a young girl who suddenly finds herself in charge of Japan after aliens crash land on earth and accidentally kill the Prime Minister of Japan and then use their mental powers to make everything right again. Thanks to an imperfect grip on human affairs however, many things are not the way they should be, like the Russian premier being a shapely young woman for example. It probably gets weirder than that to be honest. Hit the link for the trailer. (link) Swordfighting on the Wii? Finally! Nintendo has finally gotten around to using the Wii Remote for what is clearly its true purpose: giving us gamers the chance to swordfight. Shigeru Miyamoto announced this week that the new Legend of Zelda game will use the MotionPlus to simulate actual sword play. Twilight Princess was nearly there, but you really had to want to believe you were engaging in tense duels. Personally, I’m really looking forward to squaring off against a Stalfos or a gang of Moblins in pitched battles, but then again, I’m that kind of guy. (link) The Sparkle is Nanomachines Sometimes it feels like you’ve stepped through a broken mirror into a crazy parallel dimension where everyone has a goatee for no good reason. This week was one of those times, as it was announced that Hideo Kojima – creator of the ultra-macho Solid Snake – will be judging a Japanese Twilight fan art competition. Now, I have nothing against Twilight, but it just seems so bizarre, like David Jaffe running seminars on relaxation techniques. Kojima will be donating a signed copy of Metal Gear Solid 4 to the lucky winner, although how much of a prize a Twilight fan would find that remains to be seen. (link) Prince of Persia Trailer Makes the Unthinkable Real My fellows, the first sign of the end of days is upon is us, thanks to Jerry Bruckheimer and his eldritch homunculus Jake Gyllenhaal. The first trailer for Disney’s upcoming Prince of Persia flick has hit the net and it actually looks quite good. Not “sweep-the-boards-at-the-Oscars” good, but not gut-twistingly horrendous like all of its predecessors. Truly, ’tis the first sign that Ragnorok will soon be upon us, we just have to be on the watch for a four-headed snake and a goat with a fine baritone singing voice now. Click the link to watch the trailer. (link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-03-02” author: “Nora Clark”

That…Is a Lot of Users… Xbox Live hit a milestone this week as two million users logged on to the system at the same time. Major Nelson’s Tweet on the matter didn’t go into specifics, but let’s face it, we all know that it’s because of Modern Warfare 2. Don’t be coy Nelson, we know what’s going on… we’ve always known. (link) Fox News Attacks MW2, No One Is Surprised Oh Fox News, what would we do without you? Well, we’d all have lower blood pressure and games would probably be much further on as an art form, but that’s rather beside the point. Fox News continued its misguided war against games this week, under the pretense of having a ‘fair and balanced debate’ about the game’s themes. Also, a special prize has to go to Jon Christensen of /gamer for being the least eloquent spokesperson we could have hoped for. Hit the link for a video. (link) IN YOUR FACE, GTA IV!!! Ok, so Mewtwo comes out, and sells many, many copies. The world is unsurprised, but it may interest you, and this hypothetical and hard to surprise world, exactly how well it sold. Say we pick a market at random, the UK for example. In the UK, CoD: MW2 sold twice as many copies on its first day than Grand Theft Auto IV. That’s right, Mewtwopulled a double GTA. Yes, I am making up slang, how good of you to notice. (link) UK Politicians Catch Mewtwo Fever! Well, sort of. Labour MP and staunch opponent of videogames Keith Vaz took his concerns over Modern Warfare 2 to the House of Commons, citing recommendations laid out in the Byron report about keeping inappropriate material away from children. At which point Sion Simon, the Minister of Culture, Media and Sport, pointed out that those recommendations were actually already being followed. Smooth going, Keith. (link) FYI, There May Be A Test Pop quiz! What was Cod Mewtwo’s release date? If you said the 10th of November, then you’d be correct, but if you said the 9th, or 8th or quite a few days this month well, you’d be kinda correct too. Several retailers, most notably gaming giant GameStop, broke the street date for the game and allowed gamers to get their hands on it a few days early. Activision was, somewhat predictably, rather unhappy about this, but says that it will not punish gamers who snagged an early copy. (link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-03-05” author: “Richard Matos”

Nintendo Fails in French Flash Fracas A court in Paris has ruled that Nintendo has no legal right to prevent third party flash cards from working on its systems. This decision followed Nintendo filing a civil suit against Divineo Group for manufacturing flash cartridges to work with the DS. The judge opined that Nintendo should make its platforms more like Windows, allowing developers to make software available however they chose. (link) Buy Saboteur New, Get Boobies for Free! EA is continuing its policy of offering DLC goodies to gamers that buy new copies of its games. Unlike Dragon Age however, Saboteur won’t have anything as pedestrian as a suit of armour or anything like that, it’ll have burlesque dancers, or more specifically, their nipples. New copies of the game will contain a code that will remove the pasties from the dancers at the in-game nightclub Belle de Nuit, while those who buy used copies will have to fork out a few bucks. Seriously though guys, there are easier – and cheaper – ways to see a bit of skin. (link) I Want To Ride The Pony! Your zoot-suit sporting, pimp-hat wearing avatar might look like the bees-knees, but even the most sartorially savvy gamer will tell you that there’s no outfit that cannot be improved by a pony, or perhaps a guinea pig, or one of the other myriad animals now available to buy for your avatar on Xbox Live. For the paltry sum of 240 spacebucks – or Microsoft points as they are more commonly known – you can get a pet of your very own. Perhaps a purse puppy would look good with your Master Chief helmet? (link) Funk 4 Butler Yay! More PS3 ads! No, I didn’t think I’d ever be saying that either, as PlayStation ads are normally all monochrome desolation and bug-eyed space children and such, but Sony seems to have nailed it with the Kevin Butler ads. These two aren’t the best in the series, but they’re still pretty damn funny. Oh, and Mr Butler? My friend John reeeeeally likes you. Hit the link for sweet video goodness (link) Give Games, Save Lives Donate Games, a charity set up to help fund research into rare genetic diseases, is now has many used titles for you to buy. The system is a simple one, you donate a game and get a tax deductable receipt and then other gamers buy your used games, with all the profits going to the charity. The founder of Donate Games, Jim Carol, was inspired by the Child’s Play charity after his son benefitted from it while suffering from a rare form of leukemia. Visit Donate Games here. (link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-01-20” author: “Loyd Nash”

Home Run for…er…Home Sony has reported that it’s Home service on the PSN has hit the 10 million user mark. That’s not active members of course, just the number of people who have logged into Home at least once. It sounds like Sony is trying to improve Home’s lousy retention rate with some cool new spaces. How these new spaces, based on Uncharted 2 and Ratchet & Clank will be an improvement on the existing spaces that have failed to capture anyone’s attention, is unclear at this point however. (link) What’s Your Fortitude Save? Unless you’re one of those freakish robot people that just quits one day and never looks back, giving up smoking is more than a little challenging, but have no fear, because the power of nerdcore and Dungeons & Dragons can help. Eminent nerdcore star MC Frontalot has revealed the method he used to give up smoking, and it’s deliciously nerdy. Using a set of custom RPG rules – and some willpower, of course – Frontalot managed to beat his addiction. Hit the link for more info, your lungs might just thank you for it. (link) Can You Describe The Console, Ma’am? Console theft is on the rise, and not just a little bit, either. According to the FBI, console theft has nearly quadrupled since 2007, with 42,615 consoles reported stolen in the U.S. this year. “Local and state police officers routinely see a spike in these type of crimes during the holiday season,” said FBI Special Agent Jason Pack. “Stolen electronics are easily sold on the street for quick cash.” On a related note, does anyone want to buy a PS3? (link) Standing in Its Shadow Web listings on the websites of Japanese retailers are suggesting that Team Ico’s beloved PS2 games, Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, might be getting re-releases ahead of the team’s latest offering, The Last Guardian. According to the Team Ico Gamer blog, “all major Japanese retailers” are listing “Wanda and the Colossus (Best Edition)” – which despite sounding like a Saturday morning cartoon, is the Japanese name for SotC – for release in early February next year. I have very little else to add to this except: SQUEEEEEE! (link) Australia Asks Grown Ups for Their Opinions Are you Australian and one of the many adult gamers tired of being treated like a child? Well, your government wants to hear from you as it gathers opinions on changes to the country’s videogame certification laws with the release of a discussion paper on whether or not at R18+ rating for games should be given consideration. However, regardless of what the paper uncovers, Michael Atkinson still has to agree to any changes in the law, and he has been less than accommodating so far. (link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-03-09” author: “Steve Montes”

Of Brains and Bewbs Sex sells; everyone knows that. From beer to cars, advertisers use ‘teh boobies’ to hawk us products, and games are no different. We’ve all seen the ads for free MMO Evony and likely rolled our eyes at the parade of increasingly lurid adds. Well guess what? PopCap did the same thing, and then satirised the Evony ads with one of their own for the horticultural and undead themed tour de force Plants Vs Zombies. I like to call her ‘Darleen’, I think she’s purty… (link) Sinning, Winning and Rebuffing EA has caught plenty of heat over their ‘Sin-to-Win’ marketing campaign, and it appears that in an effort to regain some face, they selected a man posing with another man as one of the runners-up. Unfortunately for them, the winner in question was a writer for GayGamer who politely turned down the offered prize and offered EA some useful suggestions about how they might spend the $240 he had saved them. So fair EA has kept its mouth shut over PixelPoet’s message. Probably wise. (link) Germany Bitten by Net Petition In the hierarchy of effective protests, the internet petition ranks somewhere alongside angrily yelling at the moon. This holds true everywhere, well, everywhere except German it seems, which has a law that any internet petition that receives more than 50,000 signatures must be discussed in public hearing. This becomes especially relevant as Germany has been mulling over a blanket ban on violent games following the Winnenden shootings and this humble petition has thrown a spanner into the works. Will this be the saviour of German gamers? Only time will tell. (link) William Shatner: Poet of the Frozen North If there’s one thing that Republicans and Democrats can agree on, it’s that Sarah Palin’s resignation speech was a sprawling mess. Thanks to Conan O’Brien though, we discovered what the problem was, Palin lacks a poet’s soul. But help was on hand was in the form of Captain Kirk AKA William Shatner, whose dulcet tones lent the speech the rich warmth it deserved. Click the link for the video. (link) Raining Down Death in Modern Warfare 2 UAV, Airstrike, Helicopter. For players of Call of Duty 4 this is a familiar list, perhaps too familiar. Knowing that familiarity breeds contempt – and kidnappings – Infinity Ward have released video footage of their new unlock system, which allows players to customize their list. I’d be surprised if they let you get something like an airstrike before you get something like a UAV, but the ability to call in an AC-130 should you get to a kill streak of 11, is a pretty nice addition. Hit the link for video-y goodness. (link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-01-20” author: “Janette Williams”

Deus Ex 3 Lookin’ Purty With New Trailer Square Enix has released a new trailer forDeus Ex 3, or to use its new, official title, Deus Ex: Human Revolution. No gameplay has been revealed yet, but the cinematics on display are pretty darn nifty. Human Revolution is a prequel to the original Deus Ex, set around thirty years before it, and presumably filling in some of the back story. Hit the link to watch the trailer. (link) BioWare Surprised by Mainstream Attention When BioWare was making Dragon Age: Origins it never imagined that the mainstream press would be interested in it, but the game has proved a hit with all walks of life, much to the company’s surprise. “I think we’ve been really pleasantly surprised, obviously,” said Online Producer Fernando Melo. Melo also mused about the franchise branching out into MMOG territory, but said that nothing was set in stone as of yet. (link) Nintendo not Working on new Wii … Yet Despite the persistant rumors, Nintendo is not working on follow-up to the Wii. Nintendo of America boss Reggie Fils-Aime has made it clear that in his company’s eyes, there is plenty of life left in the console yet. “[W]hen the software developer comes forward with an idea that can’t be executed on the current platform, that’s when we start thinking seriously about the next system,” Fils-Aime told Forbes. “We’re not there yet, from a Wii perspective.” (link) Natal Launch Line-Up to Be Shown at E3 Pop quiz time! Aside from Fable 3, what games will use Natal? Give up? I don’t blame you, as Microsoft has been tight-lipped over what Natal enabled titles will be. The good news, however, is that it’s only a few more months before we find out, as Microsoft has announced that the full launch line-up will be announced at E3, which takes place on June 15-17. The line-up is said to contain some ‘great stuff’ and has a lot of third party support. (link) Vintage Boobies in Mafia 2 In an effort to make upcoming gangster game Mafia 2 feel really authentic, 2K Games has negotiated a deal with Playboy Magazine to include collectible vintage covers and centerfolds from the magazine. According to 2K President Christoph Hartmann, this will add a “unique element of authenticity” to the game. (link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-01-18” author: “Susan Gibbs”

Kotick’s Hands Were Tied With Ward and Zampella Bobby Kotick claims that he had no choice but to fire Infinity Ward leads Jason Ward and Vince Zampella, saying that he considered the two to be personal friends and that they had compromised that friendship. “The decision to terminate the two executives was not done lightly, and was not done to deprive them of their bonuses,” Kotick said. “We did this to protect the company’s assets and the interest of our shareholders.” (link) Street Fighter Fan-Film Is Amazing If you’ve seen the Street Fighter movie or the more recent Legend of Chun-Li you’d be forgiven for thinking that anything live-action involving Street Fighter is doomed to suck. Fortunately, you’d be wrong, as a short fan made film, depicting an epic battle between Ryu and Ken, provs. It’s incredibly well made and will restore at least some of your faith in Street Fighter movies. Hit the link for the video. (link) Star Wars, in Two Minutes, in Lego Ok, Lego Star Wars is one thing, but this, well this is a whole other thing. What this is, is the entire original Star Wars trilogy recreated in stop-motion animation using Lego in around two minutes. All the major events are there, and it’s amazing quality animation. Best of all it’s packed full of little touches, for eagle-eyed fans to spot. Hit the link to watch the video. (link) Spider-Man Foils Comic Theft A would be comic-book thief tried to steal a $150 comic from an Australian comic book store on Free Comic Book Day, but was foiled by none other than your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. The Store owner was dressed up as everyone’s favorite web-slinger to promote the event, and managed to get the book back after some Jedi prevent the man from leaving. (link) Hug a Boomer! Valve has added a new item to its range of merchandise, a huggable, plush boomer from the Left 4 Dead games. The thing costs fifty bucks, but it’s a decent size and has a range of authentic boomer sounds like “Bluuuuerrrgghh” and “BOOM!” It’s the ideal thing to snuggle up to if you have a thing for grotesquely bloated, bile spewing, undead zombie bombs. (link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-02-06” author: “Todd Moore”

The Rock Band Effect, Explained With Science! If I said that ‘Rock Band allows you to infer causality from temporal contingency’ would you know what I meant? How about if I said “Rock Band makes you feel like an awesome rock star!”? Apparently those mean the same thing, but the first is the scientific way to explain why Rock Band and Guitar Hero are so popular, at least according to Gary Marcus, a professor of psychology at New York University. I’ll be sticking with the latter explanation, I’ll never remember the first one. (link) Left 4 Dead 2 Not Welcome Down Under In the event of a zombie apocalypse, I’m moving to Australia. Zombies are not only shunned Down Under, but are in fact banned. Or at least it seems that way, considering how the OFLC has reacted to Valve’s survival horror game Left 2 Dead 2. Apparently the game is too gory to qualify for the country’s highest rating, the MA15, and so has been refused classification. Valve say it is going to try and work on the game so that it gets a release in Australia though, so keep watching this space! (link) Cheat at Shadow Complex, Lose Your Score Hey, were you planning to cheat at Shadow Complex? Don’t bother, it’s really not worth the hassle. In exchange for your fleeting ephemeral brush with fame, the Xbox Live Enforcement Team – an ominous sounding group at the best of times – will hunt you down, strip you of your minor accomplishment and then, and this is the important part, they will take your entire gamerscore and tear it from your still-living body and then brand you as a cheater forever! Maybe a little on the heavy handed side, but sometimes you have to get medieval. (link) College Kid Kills Burglar With Sword “Guy killed me with a sword, Mal. How weird is that?” It’s a funny, if sad, line when it’s in Serenity, but it’s not quite as funny when it’s actually happening. A 21 year old Chemistry student at John Hopkins University in Baltimore investigated a noise in his garage one night, armed with a katana, whereupon he found an intruder who lunged at him, forcing the student to defend himself. The intruder, who has not been named, suffered two wounds: one to the wrist, effectively severing his hand, and another to the chest, which proved fatal. (link) Gabe Newell Cons Vacation out of the Internet Gabe Newell is a clever man. “I’m boycotting your campaign,” he said, “you’ll have to fly me out to Australia if you want me to look at it”, all the time rubbing his hands in glee as he set his Machiavellian plan into motion. Just as he planned, the internet quickly clubbed together and voila, one free trip to Australia has fallen into his lap. All he has to do is look at some mod-thing when he gets there and then has nothing to do except lie back and catch some rays, and it’s all thanks to the internet! (link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-01-22” author: “Roberta Williams”

Sony’s Bloodsucking Nazi’s Not Real Sony’s recent ad campaigns have garnered considerable attention for the company, both positively in terms of sales and negatively in terms of angry letter from Nigeria; and that’s just the funny one about the PS3 Slim. The one from South America with the Nazi blood transfusion could have been much, much worse. Luckily for Sony, that particular ad is a fake, created by a marketing company and released without their permission. Hit the link for all the details. (link) Not Everyone Gets to be Ryu There are a lot of characters in Street Fighter, some of them are good, some of them are bad, and some of them are Dan Hibiki. But would you believe that there are some fighters in the Street Fighter universe that make even Dan look awesome? Borne of the collaboration between Capcom and White Wolf – now a part of CCP – in the mid nineties, ten fighters who should never seen the light of day. My personal favourite? The little girl in the body of a Spanish ninja, the hilarity of which is only surpassed by its creepiness. (link) Ezio: The Man’s Assassin Assassin’s Creed 2 is, in many ways, an attempt to build upon the groundwork of the first game and address some of the issues that gamers had with it. New boy Ezio can do a number of things that Altair couldn’t, like glide, swim, and change his clothes – a tricky endeavor for even the most highly trained assassin apparently – and thanks to Benoit Lambert, producer for Assassin’s Creed 2, we have recently learnt that Ezio can ‘get nasty’, which means there is a potential for boobs in the game… Don’t know about you, but I’m sold. (link) Didn’t I Buy This Already? Capcom like discs. Why else in this day and age of easily downloadable content, would it release the expansion to Street Fighter 4 on a DVD rather than just letting you grab it off Xbox Live or PSN? What’s that? So that it can get you to pay for things you’ve already bought once? Oh for shame you cynical soul! How could you think that about Capcom? Regardless of the reason, Super Street Fighter IV is in the works and will feature eight new characters, including Dee Jay and T.Hawk, alongside the existing roster. Well ok, new-ish. Click the link for a trailer. (link) Stardock Caught Up In Boycott Snow Ball Sins of a Postal Boycott might not have quite the same ring as Stardock’s most famous product, but it’s decidedly apt, due to CEO Brad Wardell’s decision to boycott courier company UPS; although if you ask him, it’s not a boycott. What prompted the decision to stop using UPS was the courier’s decision to boycott Fox News, by not advertising on the channel, due to its disquiet at some of the opinions espoused on the channel. According to Wardell, had UPS pulled its advertising quietly, there wouldn’t have been a problem, but by making a big deal of it, pushed Wardell to look for alternative methods of moving things around. (link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-01-30” author: “Reynaldo Velasquez”

7 in 10 Gamers Prefer Steam Stardock CEO Brad Wardell is a classy kinda guy, I know this because it takes class to admit that you’re not the biggest game in town, and Stardock’s digital distribution platform Impulse is by no means the biggest game. By Wardell’s own admission, Valve’s Steam platform is seven times the size of Impulse, and represents nearly three-quarters of the market. According to Wardell, Steamworks and Valve’s exclusive content makes it difficult to compete. (link) Crazy Man Goes Mad For Litigation You might recall the story of Erik Estavillo, the agoraphobic man who sued Sony after his own bad behavior got him booted from PSN. Well, he’s up to his old tricks again, this time suing both Microsoft and Nintendo. Estavillo wants $75,000 from Microsoft after his Xbox 360 red-ringed, and $5,000 from Nintendo for blocking the ‘homebrew’ channel and forcing Estavillo to put some actual effort into unlocking characters on Mario Kart. To be fair to Mr. Estavillo, he does suffer from a fairly long list of quite nasty medical conditions, but that doesn’t excuse him from being a greedy jerk. (link) Atkinson Continues to Insult Australian Gamers Australian Attorney General Michael Atkinson, or the Great Law-Devil as I like to call him, has reaffirmed his stance on an R18+ rating for videogames in a letter to a constituent. According to the Law-Devil, parents would be unable to prevent children from playing violent games at home, and so it is safer all round if Australia continues to be the censorship capital of the English speaking world. Noting that he is up for re-election this year, the Law-Devil goaded Australian gamers to field a candidate the stand against him, clearly subscribing to the ‘come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough’ school of politics. Classy Mike, classy.(link) Pandemic Studios Closes Doors Pandemic Studios, creators of the Mercenaries series, is to close down as parent company EA seek to cut costs. EA will keep a small core team, presumably to complete work on Saboteur, but 200 employees, including all the upper management, have lost their jobs. The Brisbane office of Pandemic, which was responsible for the Destroy All Humans games, was ‘let go’ by EA earlier this year after the stalled Dark Knight game. The thoughts of everyone here at The Escapist go out to those who have lost their jobs, and we hope they find their feet quickly. (link) Gearbox CEO Bashes Crytek, id Seemingly bored with taking pot-shots at Valve, the Gearbox head honcho Randy Pitchford has turned his attentions to FPS veterans id and Crysis developer Crytek, bashing them for making games that push technological boundaries rather than focusing on current hardware. In Pitchford’s eyes, id and Crytek are risking failure by assuming that this console generation will last the same length of time as the last one. Does he have a point, or is he just attention starved? (link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-03-12” author: “Nigel Guedry”

Playboy Gets Bitten by Cosplay Bug It takes a special kind of character to get Playboy to start doing cosplay, but apparently Bayonetta fits the bill because the official Playboy site is running an ‘article’ about the best looking Bayonetta cosplayer, from its stable of young ladies. It’s not the best cosplay you’ll ever see, as none of the girls really look all that much like the character, but if you’re into that kind of thing, give it a look. (link) You’re In the Desert and You See a Tortoise… Is your phone a replicant? Probably not, but the estate of Philip K. Dick, is still up in arms about Google’s decision to name its phone the Nexus One. According to Dick’s daughter Isa Dick Hackett, the name is a clear reference to the Nexus-6 model replicants in “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”, which became the movie Blade Runner. While there is a clear similarity in the names, Dick’s legal team will still have to prove that the products are connected. (link) Free to a Good Home: One Orc When you get an orc, you expect it to be for life, so my deepest sympathies go out to 42 year old Robert Cushnie, who had to choose between his orc and his bride. Robert’s wife Dee found the full-size model of a World of Warcraft more than a little intimidating, saying “I just don’t like it … I’m only 5’3″, so it towers over me, which is quite creepy.” Dee gave her husband an ultimatum, either ditch the orc, or she was moving to Canada. Luckily, Robert found a new home for the model in Aberdeen, so their split was averted. (link) Press X to Renounce Satan Electronic Arts? Eldritch Arts more like, at least that’s according to Marla Jo Fisher, a staff writer at the Orange County register in her impartial and well thought out article “Videogames Were Invented By The Devil”. According to Fisher, if Isaac Newton had had a Nintendo DS – and I assume that in her world, DS stands for ‘Devil Satan’ – he’d never have come up with the theory of gravity and that videogames will prevent children from becoming the leaders we need in the future. It’s possible however, that she might be a little over sensitive, as this quote suggests: “On one horrible afternoon that scarred me for life, I even saw a kid walking out of the public library playing a Nintendo DS.” The emphasis is mine by the way. (link) Shock, Horror! Zac Efron Actually Human! Who’d have thought that Zac Efron,a man that most people assumed was from the Disney clone farms, is actually a human being after all? Not a good human being mind you, but human none the less. According to his girlfriend Vanessa Hudgens, who, along with Efron, got her break in the Disney Channel movie High School Musical, Efron spends too much time on his Xbox and not enough time with her in the regeneration alcove, or whatever it is she does for fun. (link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-02-05” author: “Barbara Oconnor”

Go Second, You’ll Live Longer. Scientists believe that they have discovered the secret of winning in cowboy duels. A study conducted at the University of Bristol in the UK, showed that it wasn’t the person who went first who was the fastest, it was actually the second, with participants who reacted to something moving 9% faster on average than those who initiated the movement. Nine percent might not sound a lot, but in actions measured in the fractions of seconds, it apparently can make the difference between life and death (link) Long Live the… Oh, Never Mind How long does it take to fell an immortal twice-damned king? Apparently about a day, if you’re talking about Arthas Menethil in World of Warcraft. American Horde guild ‘Blood Legion’ managed to fell the wrathful Lich King only a day after the boss became available, blasting through the content and beating European rivals Ensidia in the process. Sadly, being an undead monster has its perks, and Arthas is expected to make a full recovery, just in time for the next party to fight him. (link) Mass Effect 2 on PS3?! No When Polish gaming site Kikoo reported that it had found PS3 specific code in the PC version of Mass Effect 2, it sent a ripple of hope through BioWare’s PS3 owning fans. Could the game be coming to the PlayStation 3? The answer, sadly, is no, and BioWare’s community manager Chris Priestly had this to say about it: “The Unreal Engine is cross platform, hence the PS3 code. This was brought up back in Mass Effect 1 days as well. Mass Effect is for the PC and Xbox 360.” Sorry guys, maybe next time. (link) Beauty Queen Doesn’t Like Video Games Miss America may sound like a superhero name, but unless ‘looking ok in a bikini’ is suddenly a superpower, the reality is much less compelling. The current holder of the Miss America title, Caressa Cameron, used her ‘coronation’ as a platform to express her views on how to raise children, which over carry a lot of weight as she has only recently stopped being a child herself. “Take away the TV, take away the video games, set some standards for our children!” she said, adding that kids should be “playing imaginary games with sticks in the street like I did when I was little.” Thanks for that, very insightful. (link) How Do You Fancy Seeing Some Boobs? Well, not just boobs, as the leaked footage of Heavy Rain contains more than just a pair of pixilated jubblies. There’s also a pretty intense fight scene, and well, someone peeing. Credit has to go to David Cage and the rest of Quantic Dreams, as action depicted looks pretty cool, as well as adding credence to his comment that the game wasn’t porn. I mean, even if it was, it’s creepy as hell, with uncanny valleys all over the place. Hit the link for the video. (link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-03-12” author: “Louise Lucky”

DOA: Paradise Not Degrading, Apparently Dead or Alive: Paradise, a new volleyball game for the PSP has been defended by its creator as being not degrading. Instead, the intention is to “bring out the beauty of women”, and any similarities to soft core pornography are completely unintentional. What do you think, are the DOA games a tribute to women, or a just an excuse for a bit of titillation? Hit the link for the DOA: Paradise Trailer, which is filled with lots of scantily clad women jiggling and bending over and otherwise bringing out their beauty. (link) Come See the Miraculous God of War III What would you do if I told you that I knew of a game that had no loading times, and no install? You’d probably call me a liar, but apparently God of War III is that game, requiring only a few megabytes to save your game, but otherwise being free from loading screens and installs. Given that the game clocks in at around the 40GB mark, that’s quite impressive, but it makes me curious about how exactly Sony Santa Monica has managed it. They didn’t have really slow elevators in Ancient Greece, did they? (link) Devil Moonlights in Videogames Here’s something that I bet you didn’t know, a lot of games have a co-op mode that gamers aren’t aware of, a mode where your gaming partner is the Devil! Apparently Satan has found a new weapon in the war for our souls, the humble videogame, which apparently often cast the Source of all Evil as the hero, while vilifying God to gamers. I must admit to being a little skeptical here, as I remember killing plenty of demons, but seem to be drawing a blank on the number of times where I actually was a demon. (link) BioShock 2 Collector’s Edition Contains Messages From Rapture It turns out that black lights have more uses other than making those totally sweet black velvet paintings glow, they can also reveal secret messages on posters. The BioShock 2 Collector’s Edition came with the poster prints, which revealed secret messages like “The end of Ryan is the end of self” under a UV light. Will this start a craze of people shining black lights on things? We can only hope that that is the case. (link) Fight of the Century! Thompson vs. Kotick Shock! Horror! Bobby Kotick thinks the games his company makes are good! To most people that’s not going to come as much of a surprise, but to disgraced attorney and anti-gaming activist Jack Thompson, Kotick’s recent comments about getting lost in MewTwo for hours are evidence of exactly how dangerous games are. “This admission flies in the face of videogame industry spokespersons’ false, sometimes perjured assertions, that video games do not affect the behavior of minors,” he wrote in a letter to California Senator Leland Yee. “Here is a full-grown adult (at least in chronological terms) admitting just the opposite.” You keep banging that drum Jack, I’m sure someone will listen eventually. (link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-01-19” author: “Gary Smith”

CliffyB Will not be Tooled-up on Jimmy Fallon Cliff Bleszinski, better known as CliffyB – much to his chagrin – has confirmed that he will not be going on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon armed. According to the designer’s Twitter feed, the announcement happening next week – whatever it might be – will be a more reserved affair than the announcement of Gears of War 2 at GDC 08. Will Gears of War 3 be revealed, or will it some other Epic property? One thing is for sure, nothing is getting sawn in half. Well, probably not anyway. (link) Halo Movie Gets Trailer It’s been a long time coming, but Halo is finally making its way to the big screen. Ok, that’s not entirely true, but that doesn’t change the fact that the mocked-up Bollywood style trailer is amazing. Halo depicts the love between John 117, better known as Master Chief, and Cortana, through the medium of dance. As April Fools’ pranks go, this one was pretty epic. Hit the link for the video. (link) Porn Star Gamer Wants to Mix Business and Pleasure Belladonna, an adult film actress of some renown, has revealed that in her spare time, she is a big gaming fan and especially loves to play World of Warcraft. She’s also expressed an interest in mixing her work and her hobby together: “I’d love to dress up as my Priest on World of Warcraft and do a scene like that. I remember I shot a scene with Kimberly Kane where we were both playing the Wii, and we were supposed to be nerd girls then yeah, the sex started to happen. I’ve been thinking about it before, but now I’m really interested in it.” (link) Viral Videos, Kids and Scarface Popcorn in place of cocaine, toy guns and ‘fudging’ used in place of other, harsher, invective might not be a faithful rendition of Scarface, but when you’re working with kids, you have to make some compromises. A two minute video, which apparently showed elementary school kids re-enacting the very adult 1983 movie turned up on the internet this week. Naturally it was a fake, but it was hilarious all the same. Hit the link to watch for yourself. (link) Heavenly Sword Dev Made No Money on Game If your game sells a million and a half copies, you’d think that that would net you quite the tidy sum, but that’s not necessarily the case, not if you’re a small independent studio like Ninja Theory. “It’s difficult. Heavenly Sword came out pretty early on the PS3, and we sold, I think, a million and a half copies, and that’s still not enough as an independent studio to break even,” said Ninja Theory co-founder Tameem Antoniade. “The publisher potentially breaks even at that point, but the developers don’t.” (link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-02-13” author: “Amos White”

Are You a Porn Pirate? Videogames aren’t the the only industry to suffer from piracy; the porn industry is feeling the pinch too, which is why a collection of performers and directors – including Ron Jeremy and Kimberly Kane of I Hit It With My Axe fame – have gathered together to urge you to pay for your adult entertainment. The video is nudity free, but it is about porn, so hit the link – at your own discretion – to watch it. (link) Bungie’s Surprising Deal Bungie is to partner with Activision to publish its new, post-Halo IP. The deal, which lasts an entire decade, gives Activision the exclusive right to publish the new games over multiple platforms, with Bungie retaining the actual rights to the IP. The announcement is pretty historic, but is so out of left field that it’s taken a lot of people by surprise. (link) Activision Gets Sued Again Getting sued by Infinity Ward staff members must be getting close to being passé for Activision. A second suit is being brought against the company over unpaid royalties, this time from a group of 38 current and former IW staff members who are seeking hundreds of millions of dollars for both unpaid bonuses and punitive damages after claiming that effectively Activision tried to hold them hostage by withholding the money they were owed. (link) All Hail the Destroyer, Pikachu! Let’s be honest here, Pokémon can get a little weird from time to time, but never “rise from your watery slumber and destroy us all” weird. We should be thankful then, that a mystery artist has filled that gap for us, and given us pokémon that we can have terrifying nightmares about. I’m not sure which is more scary, the exposed brain of Psyduck, or the cold dead eyes of Kingler. (link) StarCraft 2 Gets Go-Karts The StarCraft 2 map editor is a pretty versatile thing; in fact, it’s so versatile that someone used it to make a little go-karting game. It’s not exactly Mario Kart, but considering that the editor has only been available for a couple of weeks, it’s really rather impressive. My favourite part is the custom unit “Sweet Ass Go-Kart”. Hit the link to watch the video. (link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-01-17” author: “Bryan Mills”

Next Call of Duty Will Have Dedicated Servers Call of Duty: Black Ops probably isn’t going to match the sales of Modern Warfare 2, but it does have something that MewTwo doesn’t: dedicated servers. In a move certain to endear him to the PC gaming community, Treyarch boss Mark Lamia said that he couldn’t think of any reason not to include dedicated servers, saying he thought they were “excellent”. (link) BioWare Writer Takes Shots at FFXIII BioWare Austin writing director Daniel Ericksonn doesn’t think Final Fantasy XIII is an RPG, and he doesn’t care who knows it. In an interview with Strategy Informer he said: “You can put a ‘J’ in front of it, but [Final Fantasy XIII’s] not an RPG. You don’t make any choices, you don’t create a character, you don’t live your character… I don’t know what those are – adventure games maybe? But they’re not RPG’s.” (link) I Choose You! Whatever You Are… After teasing us with silhouettes, Nintendo revealed the starting Pokémon for Black & White. Known as Tsutaja, Pokabu, and Mijumaru in Japan, their names will undoubtedly get changed for the western release, and players will get to choose between a snooty tree lizard, a cheery fire bunny-pig, or a grumpy-but-adorable sea otter as they set out on their poké-adventure. Personally I’m tending towards the third option, who may or may not end up nicknamed “Otto”. (link) Last Spartan Goes Down After a long and valiant effort to keep it alive, Halo 2‘s multiplayer has finally been shut down for good, as the last remaining player, Apache N4SIR, was “forcefully removed” from the server at 1:58 EST on May 11. Apache thanked Bungie for creating the game, and also thanked Microsoft for its part in developing and publishing the franchise. Whatever you think of Xbox Live, it’s hard not to be a little impressed by the dedication shown by this group of die-hard fans. (link) GameSpot Employee Fired After RapeLay Interview GameStop employee Derek Littlejohn found himself out of work not long after he gave an interview to a college newspaper about the controversial Japanese game RapeLay. According to Littlejohn, RapeLay is just a game, and it’s pretty easy to pirate such titles if you want to, a process that he described, just in case any readers didn’t know it. So what got him fired? Well, given the context, telling the interviewer he worked at GameStop probably wasn’t the smartest move. (link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-02-03” author: “Evette Seidl”

Porn Purveyor Targets Consoles Steven Hirsch, co-founder of adult media studio Vivid Entertainment is trying to get one of the console makers to feature his company’s content on their online service. His first port of call was Sony, but after being turned down there, he says he’s moving on to Microsoft: “If we could get further than we did with Sony [on Xbox Live], we’d be very interested.” I can’t see him – or any other adult film maker – succeeding, but you have to admire his tenacity. (link) First Look at Captain America’s Movie Costume If there’s one thing that cosplay has taught us, it’s that getting a superhero costume to look right on an actual human being can be quite tricky, and often comic book designs end up looking silly. Rejoice then, that the suit for the titular hero in Captain America: First Avenger has been tweaked a little to make it as “real person” friendly as possible. I will admit that I kind of miss the wings on the mask, but I can live without them. Hit the link to see for yourself. (link) Mass Effect 3 Will Be More Upbeat Than Its Predecessor Did Mass Effect 2 leave you feeling down in the dumps? Well have no fear, as Mass Effect 3 will be a lighter affair, according to producer Casey Hudson. “We’re not talking too much about Mass Effect 3 right now, but the second story in a trilogy is where you traditionally end up in a fairly dark place. The third story is where you try and bring some fun and lightness back into it … Mass Effect 3 is going to be the epic conclusion… so, a lot more darkness but also a lot more humor.” (link) FF7 Writer Bashes Nintendo Masato Kato, who wrote Final Fantasy VII and Chrono Trigger, claims that the age of Nintendo is over, and it is Apple that has killed the giant. Well, sort of, as he also claimed that the Nintendo had been digging its own grave with the Wii and the DS. I can’t decide whether to take him seriously or not, because while Apple is growing into the games market, the Wii and DS have been phenomenally successful. (link) Unnamed Obsidian Employee Disses Alpha Protocol Following a string of disappointing reviews for Alpha Protocol, an unnamed individual, who allegedly works for Obsidian, has lashed out at the game, saying that it should have been cancelled. The anonymous source, calling themselves a “tired dev”, laid much of the blame at producer and Obsidian co-owner Chris Parker, saying that his micromanagement spoiled the game. (link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-02-26” author: “Fred Dahl”

3 Won’t Be On The 3 That’s Half-Life 2: Episode 3 and PlayStation 3 respectively. Gabe Newell confirmed that Valve is working on the final episode in the Half-Life 2 saga, and not just wrestling leopards and trying to build a unicorn. Sadly this heartening news is tempered with sorrow, as Mr Newell made it quite clear that the game probably would not be appearing on the PS3. Why does Valve hate the PS3 so much? Hit the link to find out! (link) Judgement Day Edges Ever Closer Ignore what the Terminator movies tell you, it won’t be Cyberdyne Systems that ushers in the rise of the machines; it’ll be Nintendo. AI programmer Robin Baumgarten probably had the best of intentions when he made a program capable of playing Mario on its own, but that’s how these things get started. Hit the link for video goodness. Oh, and Baumgarten? You’ve doomed us all. Thanks a lot. (link) Censors Spoil Things For Australians Again Hail traveler! Come, rest your weary legs by my fire. Might I interest you in some brugleweed? What’s that, you’re Australian? Then I’m afraid you’re going to have to leave, your government doesn’t like you fraternizing with the likes of me. The OFLC is up to its old tricks again, making life more miserable for Australia’s native gamers and making the country look bad by banning RPG title Risen. Click the link for the full details. I’ll give you a clue: See the ‘brugleweed’ above? Yeah, that. (link) When Good Nerds Go Bad We continue our theme of fictional robots causing trouble now, this time in the form of giant battlesuits for use in space. Yoshifumi Takabe burnt down his house in an effort to kill himself after his mother threw away his collection of Gundam models. Our resident Gundam expert John Funk estimated that his collection may have been worth a few thousand dollars, which totally justifies his actions in a not-really sort of way. Mr. Takabe survived the blaze, and we wish him luck in his new, maximum security, home. (link) Bored of Taurens? Be a Goblin instead! Picture the scene, Algalon the Observer lies dead at my feet, I lift my epic axe above my head and roar a battle cry. Damned cool stuff, but do you know what would make it cooler? Being a werewolf! Rumors are circulating that suggest that the Worgen will be the new Alliance race in the next World of Warcraft expansion. The Horde, on the other hand, are supposed to be getting Goblins, which is less cool, but finally gives the faction a race to make short jokes about. Are the rumors true? Find out when we report from BlizzCon! (link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-02-06” author: “Jeff Ali”

George Lucas, Steam and a Great Deal of Excitement This week’s top story is the news that LucasArts is bringing their back catalogue to Steam. After teasing us with a Twitter post, they announced that the first wave of titles would hit the service on the 8th July, giving us old-timers a chance to relive the halcyon days when LucasArts made something other than Star Wars games, and gives you whippersnappers a chance to see what we’ve been going on about for all these years. To put it another way, if you remember Loom, it’s up for grabs right now, and if you don’t, well, it’s only five bucks, what are you waiting for? (link) Sony CEO Likes to Live Dangerously Sony CEO Howard Stringer has responded to Activison boss Bobby Kotick’s comments that his company might have to stop supporting the Sony if the price of the PS3 didn’t come down. Speaking to Reuters, he brushed off Kotick’s comments, saying: “He likes to make a lot of noise, he’s putting pressure on me and I’m putting pressure on him. That’s the nature of business.” Stringer also addressed the issue of the PS3’s price saying that any drop would mean that Sony would lose money on any PS3 sold. (link) GO FOR THE EYES, BOO! This week also saw BioWare talking about Baldur’s Gate. With BioWare’s acquisition by EA, and the Dungeons & Dragons license managed by Atari, another Baldur’s Gate game seems unlikely. When Greg Zeschuk was asked if they would ever revisit the series, he said: “Maybe. The things we miss more than anything else are some of the characters we created. It’s frustrating – like Minsc and some of the other characters we built over the years – not being able to continue to stem that is a bit frustrating.” Despite this, Zeschuk felt that the Baldur’s Gate II expansion Throne of Bhaal was a fitting end for the series. “We feel like we finished our work at that time … we don’t have regrets.” (link) Mickey Mouse Buzz Saw Nightmare How about something out of left field? According to Kingdom Hearts producer Tetsuya Nomura, the concept of the keyblade was central to the story, even before there was a story. But the keyblade wasn’t the first idea that Nomura had, not by a long shot. Nomura first envisioned a chainsaw. Unsurprisingly, Disney didn’t go for it, although the idea of Mickey wielding a lancer has a certain appeal… (link) The Sincerest Form of Flattery Finally, something that’s gotten Korean gamers all kinds of annoyed. H.A.V.E. Online is a class-based FPS from publisher SK iMedia. That’s not what’s making Korean gamers angry though, it’s that the promotional trailer bares certain similarities to Team Fortress 2. Naturally, SK iMedia has denied claims that they’ve ripped off Valve’s hit shooter, releasing a statement saying: “Debating [whether or not it’s a rip-off] is like having blind men touching an elephant and describing what it looks like,” the company said. “We will reveal the gameplay soon. Other than that, we have no comment at this time.” It probably makes more sense in Korean… (link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-02-05” author: “David Lowe”

The Colored-In Money Hey kids, how do you fancy breaking a law and drawing on some cash? Not all that keen huh? Well who can blame you, especially in these difficult economic times? Luckily for us all, someone with more money than sense, and a lot of time on their hands, has graciously done the hard part for us and defaced a big stack of cash in a gleefully nerdy fashion. (link) Santa Gets Free Broadband Or he would, if he was real*. The Finnish government has stated that broadband access is now a legal right, like the right to be tried by a jury of wise elves or the ‘free-reindeer-for-every-schoolchild’ law**. The government has committed to providing every household with at least 1Mb per second in the short term, eventually increasing to an impressive 100Mb a sec by 2015. (link) *I’m kidding, Santa is totally real. ** Some of these laws may be false. I Cannae Do It Captain, I Dunnae Have The Tech! Award-winning sci-fi author Charlie Stross has finally managed to pin down what he doesn’t like about Star Trek, and as it turns out, it’s the technobabble, which he claimed the writers used as a crutch, often just writing ‘tech’ in the script. “You could strip out the 25th century tech in Star Trek and replace it with 18th century tech … without changing the scripts significantly,” said Stross in a blog post. Given that Star Trek has probably inspired countless kids to be scientist, I’m willing to let it off for not being the best written stuff in the world. (link) I bet Stormbringer Never Had To Put Up With This “Become a runeblade they said, people will fear you they said. Didn’t say nothin’ about any damn paper!” You kinda have to feel sorry for Frostmourne, it’s not easy being a terrible scourge o’er the land of Azeroth when people are making paper replicas of you, albeit almost absurdly detailed and actually very impressive replicas of you. Seriously though, even lightsabers don’t have to put up with this kind of crap. (link) Porn Game Comes With Wearable Rack Japanese sex game Huge Breast Fantasy comes bundled with – I suppose predictably enough – a huge pair of fantasy breasts, as well as a G-Cup bra so that the player can… urr… ok, I have no idea. Seriously,words fail me. (link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-01-31” author: “Elizabeth Lyons”

Nintendo Gets to the Heart of the Matter Nintendo USA President Reggie Fils-Aime claimed that gamers were ‘unimaginative’ for bashing the Wii Vitality Sensor, saying: “Until you have that software, it’s tough to understand. If I told you that you would be standing on an oversized bathroom scale, and having fun doing it, you probably would have said, ‘Reggie, I don’t get it.’ And yet here we are with the balance board arguably as the third largest development platform across the globe.” He sort of has a point, but to be fair to the balance board, it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to think of all kinds of use for it. A machine that does nothing but take your pulse? That’s a little bit more challenging. (link) OH MY GOD, YOU KILLED SHEPHERD! BioWare has revealed this week that if you don’t treat Commander Shepherd right in Mass Effect 2, he’ll die, like, forever. Along with this bombshell was a sneaky peek at one of the game’s missions, where Shepherd and Co. hunt down a man-fish assassin, as well as a new interrupt system that will let you push someone through a very, very high window at least once. For me, this is just the icing on the cake that is Mass Effect 2. Well, that and the very impressive moustache of Parrish Ley, the lead cinematic animator. (link) Miyamoto Kicks Down Zelda Timeline Sandcastle Shigeru Miyamoto knows how to be cruel. It’s a simple story, ocarinahero10, a dedicated Legend of Zelda fan who thought he’d figured out the links between the games, sent a treatise to Nintendo to see what they thought of it. Rather than just ignoring him, which would have been a kindness in this situation, series producer Eiji Aounuma, who was speaking on behalf of a shadowy cabal of Nintendo high-ups, including Miyamoto, sent the fan a reply saying that actually, there wasn’t a time line at all and all his work had been for naught. That hasn’t stopped ocarinahero10 though, he’s started a petition to force Nintendo to take him seriously, a tactic guaranteed to bear fruit. (link) Modern Warfare 2 Ultra-Special Edition is Ridiculous We all know the drill when it comes to special editions right? An art book, maybe a soundtrack CD, and usually a code to download a special multiplayer map – that’s pretty much the industry standard. Well Activison and Infinity Ward decided that the industry standard needed something more, and so for their super special edition of Modern Warfare 2, they’ve included a whole other game, the original Call of Duty, and a pair of night vision goggles. Which is a great deal, because what you need more than anything when staring for hours at a large backlit screen is a device that amplifies ambient light. (link) Teen in Running for Idiot of the Year Award It’s not often that I find myself going to the special mental vault I have to keep memes in and pull out the ‘Picard Face Palm JPEG’ to view with my mind’s eye, but sometimes there’s nothing else you can do. A young World of Warcraft player from Indiana announced in the game’s chat that he planned to hijack a plane and hurt as many people as possible, which is the equivalent of shouting it out in a large park where all the park rangers know your name and address. The teenage buffoon tried to claim that his account had been hacked, but that didn’t stop the FBI from seizing his computer, which means that at least this story kind of has a happy ending. (link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-01-21” author: “Rhonda Walker”

Wii Still Leads the Pack in the U.S. Nintendo had a pretty good January in the U.S., according to sales figures released by the NPD. How good, I hear you ask? Well, the company sold nearly 600,00 Wiis and five of the top ten games were Wii exclusives, with New Super Mario Brothers Wii beating Mass Effect 2 for the top spot by more than 80,000 copies. Sadly, both hardware and software sales were down on this time last year’s, with only a slight increase in accessories providing any light in an otherwise gloomy tunnel. (link) Troubling Times in Azeroth Pop quiz time: What’s the most notable thing about World of Warcraft? If you said that it keeps on getting bigger and bigger, I’m afraid you’re wrong. According to Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime, the game has plateued at 11.5 million users, which is still a pretty hefty number, but not the unrelenting juggernaut that most people take the game for. Is this the end of the World of Warcraft? Not according to Morhaime, who expects the numbers to start moving again with the release of the next expansion Cataclysm. (link) Muppets Lampoon the ‘Net As anyone who has ever put anything on the internet knows, the web can be a harsh mistress, with people more than willing to be incredibly mean when they know they can’t be punched in the teeth for it. Something good has come out of it however, as the Muppets neatly lampoon the tendency for people to be jerks online with another hilarious video, which you can see by hitting the link. Poor Beaker, he never stood a chance… (link) Every Time Act Like a Fanboy, 2K Marin Kills a Kitten Well, ok, the kitten thing isn’t exactly true, but the BioShock 2 developer certainly doesn’t like the never-ending conflict between platform stalwarts. “From a development perspective, the console wars are a bit silly,” said creative director Jordan Thomas. “Our target is consistency, and it’s always kind of sad to see people throwing their energy into ‘platform partisanship,’ because it seems to flood the critical channels and drown out other creative discourse.” How long before 2k Marin really does start killing kittens, just to teach us a lesson? (link) Are You Hardcore Enough for Fallout: New Vegas? Does having to keep track of thirst and the weight of ammunition sound like a lot of fun? If so, you might enjoy the new hardcore mode in Fallout: New Vegas, which adds a touch more realism to the proceedings. Also coming in the latest addition to the Fallout universe are skill-based conversation options and unique special attacks for every melee weapon. Probably the biggest draw for New Vegas however, is that it is made by the same people who made the first two Fallout games, and that’s an impressive pedigree. (link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-02-16” author: “George Kowalski”

Wil Wheaton Speaks at PAX Whether you know him as Wesley Crusher from Star Trek or Aoefel from the Penny Arcade D&D podcasts, there’s no denying that he is one of us, and his PAX East Keynote celebrated the gathering of 50,000 like-minded souls, and that the act of gathering together was something very special. He talked for an hour, so I’m not going to even try to sum up the rest of his speech; I recommend that you hit the link to see what John Funk had to say about it. (link) Ubisoft Apologizes For DRM Outage With Free Games It might have happened a little sooner than some people expected, but Ubisoft’s DRM Servers suffering a catastrophic failure was pretty much inevitable. So what’s the best way to apologize when people can’t play their games? By giving them other games for free! The gamers who suffered in the outage have been offered a free game, or special DLC for a game they already had. As an apology for the inconvenience. As apologies go, it’s not bad, but I imagine most gamers would have preferred not to have suffered at all. (link) Hollywood Wants Second Bite of Nintendo Cherry 1993’s Super Mario Brothers might have been a disaster, but that hasn’t stopped Hollywood trying to make more Nintendo movies. According to NOA Boss Reggie Fils-Aimes, studios contact him about licensing rights ‘all the time’, and most are politely turned down. “…in the end, because we are a content company and are passionate about our franchises, it will be few and far between that actual deals are done to bring our franchises to life in a different way. These are our children.” (link) BioWare Watches the Clock Well, it’s given us a clock to watch at least. A countdown timer has appeared, not just on the main BioWare site, but also on the Mass Effect and Dragon Age sites as well. Speculation on what this is counting down to is rampant, from the announcement of any one of number of sequels, or perhaps the beta of The Old Republic. BioWare remains tight-lipped however, so we’re just going to have to wait until noon on Monday to find out what’s going on. (link) Chinese Gamer Survives Knife Attack A 17 year old gamer in China has survived being stabbed in the brain with a 12 inch knife after it was noticed that he was cheating in a game of Counter-Strike. The boy is recovering in hospital after a ten hour operation to remove the knife and is currently under observation to make sure there there are no further complications due to the rust on the blade. (link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-01-15” author: “Gail Waterbury”

Respawn Bulks Up The ranks of Jason Ward and Vince Zampella’s newly-formed development studio Respawn Entertainment have swelled this week as eight former Infinity Ward staff members joined the company. Activision is apparently unsurprised at this turn of events however, and said it expects more departures from Infinity Ward. “[It’s] not over yet,” said Activision rep Dan Amrich. “More people will probably go too, looking for new situations. Maybe they will join Respawn, maybe not.” (link) Assassin’s Creed 2 DRM Defeated Assassin’s Creed 2’s copy protection, which requires gamers to be connected to the internet at all times in order to play the game, has allegedly been defeated by a group of hackers calling themselves “Skid Row.” The group thanked Ubisoft, saying that it had been “quiete [sic] a challenge”. Does the cracked version work properly? I have no idea, but even if it does, it’s quite impressive how long the DRM withstood hackers’ efforts. (link) Autobots, Deflate and Roll Out! It’s not a phrase you expect to hear yourself say, but a man has created a seven-foot tall sculpture of Optimus Prime out of balloons. The statue has moving arms and is able to stand up on its own, without needing to be supported in any way. Balloon Optimus was a 28 hour labor of love for creator HappyCabbie, and there’s a video you can watch detailing its construction. Hit the link to watch it. (link) Boy Tattles on Comic Boobs When I was ten, if I’d found a comic with nudity and violence, it would have instantly become my most treasured possession. Sheldyn Conley is clearly a purer soul than I, because he took the offending comic to his mother, who went to the press to get some answers. Hit the link to read the whole, strange tale. (link) Splinter Cell PR Stunt Goes Predictably Wrong There have been plenty of boneheaded PR stunts, but an attempt to promote Splinter Cell: Conviction in New Zealand seemed to be trying for some kind of award. The stunt involved an actor waving a gun around in a bar and threatening people, which most people would think was a bad idea. The advertising agency involved apparently didn’t, however, and had to explain to police that it was all just an act. (link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-01-28” author: “Robert Jackson”

Futurama Voice Shock! Probably the biggest and most distressing news this week was the discovery that Fox is seeking new voice actors for the principle cast of the resurrected Futurama. A spokesperson for Fox, whose parent company News Corp made $27 billion last year, had this to say: “We love the ‘Futurama’ voice performers and absolutely wanted to use [the original cast], but unfortunately, we could not meet their salary demands. While replacing these talented actors will be difficult, the show must go on.” Suffice to say, the fan reaction was less than positive. (link) Beware the Diabolical Feline! On now to cats, and their dark, eldritch schemes. A study performed at the University of Sussex has proven what cat owners have known for some time: The second you get a cat, you become caught in its web of manipulation and intrigue. The study shows that a cat can modify its purr with a special tone that we humans find impossible to ignore. “We think that [they] learn to dramatically exaggerate it when it proves effective in generating a response from humans,” Dr. Karen McComb said. “Obviously we don’t know what’s going on inside their minds. But they learn how to do this, and then they do it quite deliberately.” They have us right where they want us… (link) Shut-In Sues Sony This weeks’ “Wait, what?!?” award goes to a fellow named Erik Estavillo, whose inappropriate behavior in PS3 game Resistance and its forums got him banned from the PlayStation Network. That’s just the prelude though, as the real icing on the cake of ‘huh?’ is how he reacted to the ban: He filed a lawsuit against Sony. Estavillo is suing Sony for violating his right to “free speech” and is seeking $55,000 in punitive damages, as well as damages for the pain and suffering he has suffered. What pain and suffering I hear you ask? Well, Estavillo suffers from a shopping list of conditions, most notably agoraphobia, and apparently PSN and its forums were his only method of socializing with other people. It doesn’t look like he has much of a case, but the law is a tricky beast… (link) Activison Disses PC Gamers Cast your mind back to this time last week, when I told you the tale of the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 super-duper ultra-prestige edition, which came with a pair of night vision goggles. Remember how I said that it was ridiculous? Well it still is, but it appears as if Activison is going to deny PC gamers the opportunity to watch their hot neighbor sleep from the bushes outside. The prestige edition of CoD:MW2 or ‘Cod Mewtwo’ as I like to call it, has appeared on the websites of several major retailers, but only for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Leaving PC gamers cold seems like an odd move on Activision’s part, as historically, hardcore PC gamers – the type of gamers that buy ultra-prestige editions for their PC games – have more cash to waste; after all, a gaming rig isn’t exactly cheap. Of course, this could all be just a mistake, and the mega-supreme edition of Cod Mewtwo will be available on PC, in which case, I may owe Activision an apology. (link) Marc Ecko Shirts Offend the Eyes Marc Ecko apparently hates gamers. If Marc Ecko’s Getting Up wasn’t proof enough, just take a look at these new Halo shirts that he’s designed. Not only are the shirts so ugly that they can be considered a crime against nature, but Ecko has the gall to charge nearly $40 for them! It’s like an Iron Maiden shirt had a baby with a Three-Wolf shirt. Excuse me, I think I’m going to be sick. (link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-02-04” author: “John Radden”

Treyarch not Distracted by Infinity Ward Situation There’s been plenty going over at Infinity ward, but the Zen Masters at Treyarch are not letting it get to them. “The situation at Infinity Ward is unfortunate. It’s just not something that we want to let distract us or that we really think about too much,” said Treyarch’s Josh Olin. “We’re still focused on our primary charge – to make the best game we possible can – so we’re keeping our heads down and staying focused.” (link) Arkham Asylum 2 To Be Last Hamill Joker Outing Aside from his obvious, Star Wars-themed, claim to fame, Mark Hamill is most widely known for his impressive performances as the voice of Batman’s arch-nemesis, the Joker. But according to Hamill, Arkham Asylum 2 will be the last time he voices the Clown Prince of Crime: “This will be my last, there’s no question about that. But it’s the last hurrah.” He assures us however, that gamers are in for a treat with the sequel, although he’s been sworn to secrecy. (link) Did Warner Bros. Pirate its Anti-Piracy Software? A German company is suing Warner Bros. for allegedly stealing its anti-piracy software. Medien Patent Verwaltung claims that it showed Warner Bros. its software in 2003, expecting to be “treated fairly”, only to find that that WB used the system without ever paying for it or giving Medien Patent Verwaltung any credit. Is Warner Bros. using stolen technology? Only time will tell. (link) Grown-Up Films Remade as Kids Books You might not immediately think that mixing violent movies and children’s books would work – or maybe you do, which makes you a very special kind of person – but Josh Cooley, a story artist at Pixar, decided to give it a try. Taking the classic Golden Books and infusing them with memorable scenes from movies like Terminator and Pulp Fiction, Cooley has created something that is oddly charming. Hit the link to see more. (link) PlayStation Ink Nothing says “ex-con” like a blurry tattoo done with improvised equipment, but it’s not everyone who gets their ink done with a machine built of a PlayStation. An inmate at Brook House Immigration Removal Center built his makeshift tattoo gun out of a motor salvaged from the aforementioned console and a sharpened ballpoint pen. The device was confiscated by officials, but no further action will be taken against the inmate. (link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-02-25” author: “Royce Floyd”

Seven Kill Streak: Shiva Unlocked Time for a short quiz. Who is the publisher of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 – and before you all rush to say Activision, let me finish the question – in Japan? If you answered “Still Activision,” you’d be wrong, as Activision closed down its Japanese branch at the end of 2008, leaving the company in something of a quandary. Who could Activision turn to in its hour of need? Who could it trust with one of its most valuable franchises? Bizarrely, the answer was Square-Enix, who will be publishing the game in Japan. The rumor that a gunblade will be an unlockable weapon has yet to be confirmed or denied… largely because I just made it up. (link) Nudity And Heavy Rain Spoilers! Ok, there are spoilers in this section, so if you want to be completely surprised by Heavy Rain then skip this paragraph. Have the spoiler police gone? Awesome, we cool kids can enjoy this one in peace. Quantic Dream’s David Cage has defended a scene in Heavy Rain that reportedly made gamers feel uncomfortable. The scene in question involves lead character Madison Paige treating a seedy nightclub owner to a striptease in order to get some information. Cage said that the scene is supposed to feel uncomfortable, so that the player can empathize with Ms. Paige. Sounds a rather brave move, but pretty much what you’d expect from the man who made Fahrenheit or Indigo Porpoise as I believe it was called in the US; but don’t quote me on that… (link) Gabe Newell Takes Victoria’s Secret Second Those rascally little scamps at 4chan have been at it again it seems. Not content with voting 4chan founder Moot as Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year,” they decided to give Valve boss Gabe Newell a nice surprise by entering him in the “Love Your Body by Victoria” contest. Newell was narrowly pipped to the post however, by none other than Moot. Sadly, neither Gabe nor Moot will be winning the VIP trip to New York, because as men, they are apparently ineligible for the contest, a fact that the kind-hearted souls at 4chan no doubt overlooked in their altruistic efforts. Now, who said that 4chan were the bad guys of the internet? (link) Robots Taught Sudoku, Judgment Day Delayed A world ruled by cruel robot overlords sounds pretty unappealing, right? Damn straight it does, which is why we should all be thankful to Hans Andersson, a Swedish hacker who has averted our inevitable enslavement for another day. Hans designed a robot that could read and complete a Sudoku puzzle with no human intervention. The hope is that robots will be so distracted that by the time the revolution comes, humanity will be safely entrenched in bunkers under the sea. At least, I think that what he said, my Swedish is rusty. Hit the link for video goodness. (link) StarCraft II Will Kinda Have Something Like LAN You know how it is, when you spend a long time making something, you feel like you should use it, even if it’s more of a hindrance than a help. This strange quirk of the human condition explains so very much of our history: the Trojan Horse, Windows Vista and horrible Christmas sweaters. And now you can add Blizzard and Battle.Net to the list, because it turns out that StarCraft 2 will have something very much like LAN support, but it will have to go through Battle.Net 2.0, meaning that you will have to have at least some internet connection to get it to work. Sounds like a compromise that we can all live with, because who doesn’t have an internet connection these days? Everyone except hobbits and crazy people, that’s who! (link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-03-06” author: “Jimmy Griego”

It’s Hidden in the Code! Sometimes, while I’m scribbling away in the dead of night trying to get an article finished or a news post written, I wonder what it must be like to have free time. Then I see what people who have free time actually do with it, and I’m glad I’m so busy. Code-savvy Valve fans who got their hands on the Left 4 Dead 2 demo this week discovered that tucked away amongst the subroutines were clues as to potential downloadable content for the game, and if so, it looks like Valve is planning to release it for both PC and Xbox 360. Hit the link for more details, including a chance to look at the code in question! (link) Leaks, Terrorism and Australia There will be spoilers for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 in this section. You have been warned! Cod Mewtwo hasn’t been released yet, but it’s already getting people worked up thanks to some footage that found its way on to the internet. The footage is of the game’s opening, where the player is cast as a Russian terrorist attacking an airport and is likely to end with the player being shot in the head by the good guys. That hasn’t stopped Australian Attorney General Michael Atkinson from claiming that the sequence promotes terrorism. Personally, I’m stunned, Atkinson is normally such a reasonable fellow! (double link!) Box Squares Off With Yahtzee; Box Loses I’d hate to be a wooden crate around Yahtzee. Why, you ask? Well they don’t call him Crate Killer Croshaw for nothing. Admittedly they don’t actually call him that at all, but that isn’t really the point. Knowing that Yahtzee would be at Sky Base 1 – which is the proper name for the Escapist office – EA sent him a package containing a wooden crate, in which was a hammer, some goggles, and the monster that is Rick Astley (well, his music anyway). The only way to kill the beast of ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’ was to smash the box to get to its innards and yank the battery, which EA nicely segued into promoting its game Dante’s Inferno via the sin of wrath. (link) Cue Unnecessary Nude Transformation Sequence! No, don’t worry, I don’t mean me, none of you have earned that privilege yet. Except you, yes you, you know who I mean. Anyway, part of what made GTA IV so appealing was the vibrant world that Rockstar created for it, a trend that the company is continuing in its downloadable content. Not content with hiring ropey comedians for the Ballad of Gay Tony (I’m looking in your direction Gervais) Rockstar has created a parody of the entire genre of anime with Princess Robot Bubblegum (not pictured). It doesn’t really matter if you like anime, because they video is sure to put a smile on your face, whether wry or not. Hit the link to watch! (link) See You at the Crossroads Geocities Before Facebook let even the computer-illiterate amongst us post our every thought on the internet, Geocities let at least some of us have our very own webpages. It’s hard to talk about Geocities without sounding like a hoary old wizard, but it felt like the future, albeit a future filled with low-resolution animated GIFs and so the news of its passing is sad indeed. Of course it’s taken some seriously bad fiction I wrote when I was a much younger man with it, so it’s not all bad. Still, I shall pour a 40 on the kerb for my fallen brother. Goodbye Geocities, you will be missed… sort of. (link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-01-22” author: “Domenic Givens”

Stupidly Titled Action Game Gets Butler Treatment MAG – which stands for “Massive Action Game” – should win two awards: One for ‘Lamest Game Title of 2010’ and one for “Gameplay Idea That Sounds Good, But Will Likely Be Awful’; but gosh darn it if Kevin Butler isn’t so good that he can sell even the ropey concept that is a 256 player battle. In the video – which you can see by hitting the link – it would appear the Butler’s days at Sony are numbered. Let’s hope that that only applies to the his in-ad job, and not his appearance in the ads themselves. (link) Pokemans?! It’s Over 9000! That’s right, I’m mixing memes; consequences be damned, in this case it’s warranted. A British Pokémon fan has collected over 12,000 pieces of merchandise from the franchise’s 14-year history, making her the record holder for having the most Pokémon crap in the world. If you desperately want to see a huge pile of Pokémon staring at you with their cold, unblinking eyes, hit the link for a video. (link) No Pandora for China Following fears from the government that it might cause social unrest as its themes of eviction and relocation resonates with residents of Chinese cities forced out their homes to make way for new development, the 2D version of James Cameron’s Avatar is to be pulled from Chinese cinemas on Saturday. The 3D version of the movie is to run until the end of February, although 3D equipped theaters are much harder to come by for the average Chinese citizen, making this effectively a ban on the film. (link) “Seven Million for That? You’re Crazy!” Bobby Kotick may not that popular amongst gamers, but it’s hard to deny that the guy has a fair amount of business acumen. Even the great Kotick makes the occasional mistake however, as he recalled a time he nearly did a spit take when a business associate told him that he’d paid $7 million for a small developer called Blizzard back in 1995. Twelve years later, Activison would pay significantly more ($7 billion) for the developer when it merged with Vivendi to form the Activision-Blizzard megacorp. Still, you won in the end, eh Bobby? (link) ESRB Spoils Best Parts of Heavy Rain The ESRB listing for David Cage’s not-porn, not-game-anymore, entertainment product Heavy Rain contains some fairly epic spoilers. In the interest of keeping children safe from a game they probably won’t want to play anyway, the ESRB have revealed the very worst of the sex and violence that the game has to offer so that parents can be informed when their child asks them for another game entirely. To be fair, the ESRB is only doing its job, but it’s still a bit of a shock to have things spoiled in such a way. If you want to read the spoilers yourself, hit the link. (link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-01-29” author: “Tamatha Lytle”

Kotick Defends Himself Against His Bad Reputation Bobby Kotick? He’s an agent of the devil, right? A creature from the Howling Void sent to destroy us, right? No, of course he isn’t, don’t be so silly. In fact Kotick is sad that he’s viewed as such a villain, saying that his glib, off-the-cuff remarks have earned him a reputation that he doesn’t deserve. Honestly, when you read Kotick’s comments, he does sound like a man whose feelings have been hurt. Unless, of course, that’s what he wants us to think… (link) So I Herd U Liek Watchmen? The new DC Comics publisher has been announced, and as befits the company that brought us the Justice League, it’s a publishing super team made up of industry powerhouses, including one Dan DiDio, a long time proponent of releasing more Watchmen material. The ending of the original Watchmen makes releasing a sequel tricky, but expect to see lots of prequel material in the not too distant future. (link) Ubisoft is Watching Ever had problems with your internet connection? You have? Then you might want to avoid Ubisoft games on the PC, because you need to be hooked up to the internet at all times in order to play. No net connection, no game, it’s that simple. “We think most people are going to be fine with it,” Ubisoft’s Brent Wilkinson said. “Most people are always connected to an Internet connection.” The key word there is “most”, and even if that is the case, it’s still unacceptable. (double link) Fable 3 Co-op Does Not Require Cooperation Like its predecessor, Fable 3 will have a co-op mode, but unlike Fable 2, it won’t actually require you to adventure with your co-op partner. Instead you can go off and do, well, pretty much whatever you want, whether that’s helping old ladies across the street and fighting bandits, or selling people into slavery and marrying off your friends to random harlots without their knowledge. Choose you co-op partner wisely… (link) Man Jailed for Hentai Collection Christopher Handley, an Iowan comic-book collector, has been jailed for six months for possessing and mailing Japanese porn comic books that depicted child sex and bestiality. The sentence was the result of a plea bargain offered to him by the prosecution which he accepted based on the advice of his lawyer. It’s worth mentioning that the man did not have any actual child pornography, and while drawings of child sex are likely to offend just about everyone, they are not the same thing. (link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-02-17” author: “Cynthia Vang”

Turn Invisible Through Science! From cloaking devices to the One Ring, the idea of being able to turn invisible is a persistent one, but one that has always been the purview of fiction. But thanks to German scientists, your own invisibility cloak might not be impossible after all. It’s all just theory right now, but who knows what the future might bring? (link) Professor Offers Students a Chance to Level Up A professor teaching game design at Indiana University has ditched grades in favor of a system of experience points, with students’ final mark being determined by how much XP they have at the end of the course. The thinking behind the system is to motivate students with the game theory that they would be learning, and make the course seem more fun. Personally, I just like the idea of leveling up in real life. (link) Bad Company 2 Mocks Mewtwo Marketing Blunder Modern Warfare 2 did everything right, right? Wrong. If you cast your mind back to before the game came out, you might recall the ill-advised “Fight Against Grenade Spam” advert, which was withdrawn after people complained about its less-than-complimentary acronym. In its ongoing campaign to take potshots at Mewtwo while promoting Bad Company 2, EA has released its own ad, with a slightly more appropriate acronym. Hit the link for the video. (link) Nintendo Admits It Is Not ‘Teh Hardcorez’ If you’re waiting for Nintendo to start making hardcore titles, you might want to find a new hobby, as the company has finally confirmed what we’ve all suspected for a while: Nintendo isn’t very good at hardcore games. That’s not to say that the company is opposed to hardcore games but it’s not going to be making any in near future and will be relying on third-party developers to fill that gap. (link) And I Would Walk 500 Miles… Want to unlock everything in Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver? Well you’d better invest in some decent shoes as you’ve got quite a trip ahead of you. Pokémon enthusiasts have worked out that unlocking all the routes in the game requires a trek of at least a thousand miles to generate all the Watts you need. It’s a good job the DS is so portable really, you’ll need something to do on your trip. (link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-01-21” author: “Kristina Putney”

Rockstar Tells it Like it is Lazlow Jones of Rockstar Games has a message for people who buy games like Grand Theft Auto or Manhunt for their kids: You’re terrible parents. “We design games for adults because we’re adults,” he said. “There’s a lot of kids’ games out there that we’re not interested in playing. Just like you enjoy watching movies and TV shows with adult themes and language and violence, that’s the kind of thing we seek to produce.” (link) Megan Fox! Transform and Roll Out! A generation of geeks wept as it was announced that Megan Fox would not be returning for Transformers 3. Admittedly, they were tears of joy, but they were still tears. The official story is that she decided to leave, but after comparing director Michael Bay to Hitler in an interview, it’s not all that hard to believe that she was pushed. Regardless, there’s now a need to find another attractive young woman for Shia LaBeouf to be awkward at. (link) Blizzard Shows Off its Lady Werewolves If you’re one of those people who dreams about being a female werewolf, well, you have stranger dreams than I. But if you’ve been wondering what they might look like in World of Warcraft, then you’re in luck, because Blizzard has revealed what the female worgen will look like in the upcoming Cataclysm expansion. Worgen of both genders can be all classes except for shamans and paladins. Catacylsm has no fixed release date as of yet. (link) Romero Backs Down From “Bitch” Ads John Romero has apologized for the ads for Daikatana where he claimed he would “make you his bitch,” saying that he regretted it and had never really wanted to do it in the first place. “I knew it was risky, and I didn’t want to do it. It didn’t make sense,” he said, ” I mean, there’s the whole culture of smack talk that goes with games and especially the FPS’s, and that was something I was known for.” While his candor is appreciated, we’ve been teasing about it for ten years. We probably owe him an apology. (link) Cliffy B: Gears 2 Could Have Gone Blind Gears of War 2 played with itself too much, according to Epic’s Cliff Bleszinski. “There’s a couple of instances where you’re fighting a bunch of guys and suddenly the chopper comes along and finishes them off and you’re like: ‘F*ck! I wanted to finish them off. You just finished the game for me’,” he said. According to Bleszinski, Epic has learned its lesson, and Gears 3 will not make the same mistake. (link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-02-15” author: “Jewell Kassler”

Ebert Bashes Kick Ass Seasoned movie critic Roger Ebert has called new superhero movie Kick Ass ‘morally reprehensible’ because of the character of “Hit Girl”, a eleven year old girl that spends much of the movie killing people. “A movie camera makes a record of whatever is placed in front of it, and in this case, it shows deadly carnage dished out by an 11-year-old girl,” said Ebert. “After which an adult man brutally hammers her to within an inch of her life. Blood everywhere. Now tell me all about the context.” (link) It’s Made of Stars! Blizzard is offering WoW players to nab a rather awesome looking flying mount. The Celestial Steed, also known as a Star Pony, levels with you, moving as fast as your riding skill allows, and eventually takes off, becoming a Star Pegasus. The downside, however, is that the Star Pony carries a pretty hefty price tag, costing nearly two months’ subscription fee. But considering how much time and effort it takes to obtain a mount in game, $25 upfront might seem like a very reasonable expenditure to some. (link) Wii Fit Accident Turns Woman Sex Mad It sounds like the setup for a joke – a woman falls off her Wii balance board and wakes up a nymphomaniac – but the reality is much less amusing. A woman in the UK took a tumble while using her Wii and damaged a nerve, resulting in Persistent Genital Arousal Disorder, a serious condition that leaves a woman in a perpetual state of arousal, a condition that will impact the rest of her life. You can’t really blame this on gaming, although as a cautionary tale it’s pretty unique. (link) Co-op Gets Sexy On completely the other end of the gaming/sex spectrum, it was revealed this week that Fable 3’s co-op mode would be significantly more robust than that of Fable 2 – perhaps a little too robust – as you will be able impregnate your partner and have a child together. Whether or not the feature makes it into the final game almost doesn’t matter, just thought is pretty scary. When we said we wanted to be able to go on adventures with our friends, this isn’t quite what we meant. (link) Too Human Dev Gets Massive Grant Silicon Knights, creators of Too Human and Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem has been given a $4 million grant from the Canadian government in order to make a AAA game. This infusion of cash will let the developer add another 65 people to its workforce. “This is going to benefit Silicon Knights in ways that are profound and long-lasting,” studio head Denis Dyack said. “We are blown away and we’re happy with the support we’re getting. It is something that couldn’t have come at a better time.” (link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-03-06” author: “Marjorie Houston”

Microsoft Lifts ban on Sexuality The long-standing ban on mentioning sexuality in your Xbox Live gamertag has been lifted, allowing gamers to describe their orientation for the first time on the service. The choices are currently limited to ‘straight’, ‘gay’, ‘lesbian’, ‘bi’ and ‘transgender’, which is probably the safest way to start the ball rolling. “I truly believe that our diversity is what makes us strong,” wrote Xbox Live General Manager Marc Whitten. “Diversity in gaming and entertainment options, and diversity in the people that make up this amazing community.” Well said Mr Whitten, well said. (link) Ubisoft Tweaks its DRM Patches for games aren’t uncommon, but patches for games that aren’t out? That’s a little bit more unusual, but Ubisoft has done just that with the PC version of Assassin’s Creed 2. With the patch, should you lose your net connection it will let you resume the game from where you left off, rather than dumping you than back at the closest checkpoint. This is the first sign of Ubisoft actually modifying its DRM based on gamer feedback, although it seems unlikely that the company is going to back down from the idea anytime soon. (link) Portal 2 Teased, Then Announced Valve updated Portal this week with a new achievement and a new challenge involving radios and morse code messages. It was quickly discovered that the game had a new ending as well, all of which seemed to suggest that a sequel was in the works. Well guess what? A sequel IS in the works, but the ARG that Valve set up around the news doesn’t appear to be over yet. What’s coming next? We’ll just have to wait and find out… (link) The Terrible Tales of Infinity Ward It’s been a tumultuous week for Call of Duty creators Infinity Ward. First Activision apparently visited the building with security forces, then the two studio heads Jason West and Vince Zampella got fired, then Zampella and West sued Activision for unpaid royalties and the Modern Warfare brand, which Activison replied to, saying it was ‘disappointed’. On top of all that, it was announced that the newly-formed Sledgehammer Games would be working on the series as well as Treyarch, but that Infinity Ward would still making Call of Duty games too. So yeah, it’s been quite a week. If West and Zampella turn out to be Bobby Kotick’s long-lost brothers, I wouldn’t be all that surprised. (So very, very, many links) Videogames Are as bad as Smoking, Says Australian Psychologists Put down that game! Don’t you know it’ll turn you into a violent criminal? What’s that, you didn’t know that? How strange, because according to a gang of Australian psychologists, it’s a proven scientific fact that violent videogames make you violent, and that violent games are worse for you than cigarettes. This is just another salvo in the anti-R18+ movenment, and for all it’s “conclusive” proof, there aren’t a lot of people willing to put their names to it. As a long-term gamer who is yet to commit a violent crime, I’m going to take this one with a couple fistfuls of salt. (link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-02-04” author: “Gerald Thigpen”

How Developers Turn A Buck Into $130 First up on our round up of the weeks’ top stories is the in-depth look at videogame special editions. Cod Mewtwo might be coming with a useful item, but it’s astounding how many useless plastic objects get packaged with games and then sold for twice the normal price. In the list are plastic helmets that don’t fit, clocks that don’t work – not properly at least – and chainsaw bayonets that won’t cut. That last one was especially disappointing; Thanksgiving was ruined. (link) StarCraft 2 to Be Fashionably Late Christmas? Pah! Nobody who’s anybody is coming out at Christmas, darling! StarCraft 2 joined the list of top-tier games pushed back until 2010, known by some indigenous tribes as “The Year of the Expensive Spring.” Joining such luminaries as BioShock 2 and Mass Effect 2, Starcraft 2 will be released in the ‘first half of 2010’ and will coincide with the release of the updated Battle.net service. ZERG RUSH!!! (link) PopCap Keeps on Spoofing How long is it before a joke gets old? Not within a week apparently, as PopCap unveiled more parodies of the boob-tastic ads for free MMO Evony. The spoof Plants Vs Zombies ads are apparently the result of an impromptu, beer-fueled ‘design meeting’. Joining the lovely Darleen is a little lady I like to call Susie-Beth, whose pneumatic charms are sure to excite, and she’s only interested in one thing, if you know what I mean* (wink) *I mean brains, you pervert. (link) Internet Addiction Becomes Lethal It sounds like a bad joke: “Q: How do you cure internet addicition? A: Baseball bat.” But the parents of 16-year old Deng Senshan had nothing to laugh about when they learned that their son had been beaten to death by three teachers at the internet addiction camp they had sent him to. Internet addiction is seen as a major problem in China, and there are hundreds of these camps all over the country, and up until very recently, electro-shock therapy was seen as a suitable treatment. (link) Sony Lovez Girlz! It’d be funny if it weren’t so tragic; Sony makes some of the finest electronics in the world, and yet its marketing department can’t seem to stop putting its collective foot in it. The latest groaner is the ads for the OMG lilac PSP to appeal to “girlz” that wind up being somewhere between insulting and cringe-inducing. It’s not as horrifying as “Squirrel, Please,” but it’s still pretty bad. (link) Tim Langdell + IGDA = Drama! Whether you think Tim Langdell is a trademark troll, or just protecting what’s his, everyone can agree that these last few days have been rather difficult. It started with a e-mail sent to the IDGA membership calling for his removal from the board of directors. That e-mail was later disavowed by the IDGA, but the damage had already been done. Now it seems that the IDGA will hold an emergency meeting over the issue, once a specially-appointed task force works out all the legal ins and outs. We’ll keep you posted on what happens. (the triple link!)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-01-19” author: “David Moistner”

Hobby Hackers Plan Space-Based Internet

While the ground-based campaign against the likes of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) continues, one group of hackers has announced its intention to try and remove nationally-controlled internets from the equation altogether by hosting its own service via private satellites and a series of groundstations. The effort is known as Project HGG (Hackerspace Global Grid), and forms part of an attempted escape from the feared censorship of the internet. (Link)

Lawyer Destroys Arguments for Game Piracy

Whenever the prosecution of game piracy is mentioned, the pirates (or, at least, apologists) come out of the woodwork to defend the crime. There’s no sure-fire way to go after IP addresses that have downloaded games illegally, they say, because the hackers can just mask their IP address. Or just because a game was downloaded doesn’t mean that the computer’s owner was the pirate. Worse, pirates say that any prosecution is just a way to scare people or that most of the time pirates become real customers of the game. Jas Purewal is a lawyer based in London and he pointed out today that most of those arguments don’t hold up to any real logical scrutiny. (Link)

BioWare Gives Best ME 3 Pre-Order Bonuses To GameStop

Pre-orders are big business with videogames, and studios often sweeten the deal by offering exclusive bonuses to those who are willing to put down a little cash ahead of time. With Mass Effect 3, BioWare has kicked things off by revealing the in-game items it’ll give you in exchange for pre-ordering the game. According to BioWare, folks who pre-order Mass Effect 3 will get to kit out Commander Shepard with both unique weaponry and armor. First off, if you pre-order the game from any retailer, you’ll get the M55 Argus Assault Rifle. (Link)

Sweden Formally Recognizes Piracy as Religion

The act of peer to peer file-sharing is a holy act and information is sacred, according to the tenets of the Missionary Church of Kopimism. An offshoot of Sweden’s Pirate Party, the 3,000 members of the church have been attempting to be recognized as an official religion since 2010. After their third application, the Swedish government agency called Kammarkollegietfinally accepted Kopimism as a formal religion when the organization outlined how members pray and conduct services. Despite the ruling, file-sharing of copyright protected creative works is still illegal in Sweden. (Link)

New Google Chrome Extension Reveals SOPA Supporters

It seems difficult to make your way around the web these days without hearing about who does, doesn’t, or did but now doesn’t support SOPA, a potential, and somewhat draconian measure that would block access to any website thought to be in violation of copyright infringement. After the collective voice and actions of multiple netizens forced Go Daddy to drop support, many internet users are looking to use that momentum to continue the fight against this impending legislation. No SOPA, a newly created free extension for Chrome, is looking to help them by putting information in their hands. (Link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-02-16” author: “Derrick Daggett”

EA Claims First Amendment Protections For Battlefield 3 Helicopters

Battlefield 3 is based on an entirely fictitious conflict but it does feature numerous real-world elements, including three aircraft that may be familiar to military aficionados: the Bell AH-1Z Viper attack helicopter, the Bell UH-1Y Venom[Super Huey] helicopter and the V-22 Osprey transport aircraft. That’s apparently a bit of a problem for Textron, the parent company of Bell Helicopter, which until recently was in discussions with EA over the unlicensed use of the aircraft in Battlefield 3. When those talks broke down, EA filed a motion in the federal court for the Northern District of California seeking a ruling that it has a First Amendment right to use real-life military helicopters in videogames without the manufacturer’s permission. (Link)

Wisconsin Congressman Steps Up to Oppose SOPA

Since its inception in October of 2011, the Stop Online Piracy Act has continued to rise in unpopularity. While the potentially internet-shattering bill does have some supporters, such as the Electronic Software Association, organizations like the Electronic Consumers Association have dedicated resources to fighting against the bill and several of the ESA’s own members have come out to voice their disapproval of the legislation. Now, Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan has stepped up to join several other government officials standing in opposition to SOPA. (Link)

Social Game Cheaters More Likely To Be Real World Cheaters Too

Does this really come as a surprise to anyone? A recent survey of social gamers in the U.S. and U.K. conducted by PopCap found that the vast majority of gamers don’t use hacks, bots or other cheats while they play social videogames, but among those who do, the tendency to cheat in other aspects of life – “real life,” you might call it – is much higher than it is in people who play by the rules. PopCap used 1201 “qualified responses,” 801 from the U.S. and 400 from the U.K., from people who play social videogames for more than 15 minutes per week. (Link)

Anti-Virus Company Sued for Scare Tactics

We’ve all seen the messages pop up on our screen. “Malware detected!” “Your computer is infected!” “Download this software now or cybercriminals will invade your privacy, steal your identity and obliterate your soul!” These are the tactics of third-rate scams, designed to have you click on them and – ironically – install viruses and malware on your machine, but I’ve always wondered how somewhat “trusted” antivirus companies like Symantec and McAfee got away with using similar methods. A new lawsuit alleges Symantec’s Norton Antivirus performs scans that don’t actually scan your computer but still warn of non-existent dangers in order to get you to pay $29.99 to upgrade. Further, the plaintiff James Gross contends that even if you pay the fee, Symentec’s applications don’t really do anything to help your computer at all. (Link)

Malware Masquerades As Fake Game Crack

You may want to think twice before you pirate your next PC game, because it turns out that a cracked code being distributed actually contains a rootkit that could do some serious damage to your computer. Malware research group GFI Software, has just revealed that it’s discovered such a case, and the fake cracking software houses a pretty nasty program. (Link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-02-13” author: “John Modlin”

British Politician Suggests State-Funded Games Addiction Rehab

Keith Vaz, British Member of Parliament for Leicester East and chairman of the very busy Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, has long been concerned about the potential he sees for societal harm in the consumption (and over-consumption) of videogames, especially in the world’s youth. Now, in response to a study that found vague similarities between the brains of internet addicts to those of people addicted to narcotics, Vaz has called for people who spend unhealthy amounts of time gaming to be treated for their addiction on the UK’s state-funded National Health Service (NHS). (Link)

Notch: Mojang No Longer “Indie”

Marcus “Notch” Perrson may have gotten his start as a no-budget programmer, but as Mojang has become more successful, the now famous developer has had to shift priorities, losing the ability to call his company “indie” in the process. “I don’t think [Mojang is] indie in the sense of how I used to work any more,” Perrson said during an interview with PC Gamer, “because we have a payroll to worry about and we need to do stuff to ensure the company lasts.”(Link)

Indy Dev Calls Zynga Out Over Plagiarism

It’s no secret that casual game-maker Zynga likes to blatantly copy elements from better games in order to scam as much money as possible from its clients. However, Mark Pincus may have copied one title too many, because the developers of the hit iOS game Tiny Tower just publicly accused Zynga of plagiarism in what is quite possibly the most amazingly public (and hysterical) way you could possibly imagine. (Link)

We’re One Step Closer to True Invisibility Cloak

Who doesn’t love it when fantasy and science fiction tropes become a reality? Well, guess what, the invisibility cloak isn’t just for Harry Potter and Star Trek anymore. Previous attempts at such a technology have relied on covering an object with a “metamaterial” that would bend microwave light. The technique created an effect that rendered most objects undetectable, but a new technique has emerged that accomplishes the same effect without the use of metamaterials. A group led by Dr. Rainwater at the University of Texas published a paper in the New Journal of Physics proving it is possible to tailor a free-standing cloak to render a 18 cm cylinder invisible. (Link)

Netflix No Longer Wants Anything To Do With Games

Remember how, a few months ago, Netflix announced plans to spin off its DVD-by-mail rental service into a separate entity called Qwickster that would allow premiere customers to rent games, too? You know, before the company’s stock prices dropped like an obese seagull, millions of customers canceled their mail accounts (or switched to streaming-only plans), and the whole concept of Qwickster was unceremoniously killed off? Well, in spite of this, a lot people were hoping that games might still come to Netflix. However, that possibility has officially been nixed. (Link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-03-09” author: “Robert Sutton”

British Student Loses Extradition Battle Over Copyright Violation

Earlier, we reported on the case of Richard O’Dwyer, the 23-year-old British student facing extradition to the US over his part in creating popular torrent site, TVShack. Last Friday, a judge in the UK ruled that there were no valid reasons why O’Dwyer shouldn’t be sent to New York state for trial. O’Dwyer faces charges of copyright infringement and criminal infringement of copyright, both of which carry a five year maximum sentence. O’Dwyer intends to appeal to the verdict. (Link)

Rockstar Searching For “Next Gen” Talent

An advertisement found on Edinburg-based Rockstar North’s website describes the company’s need for Environment Artists on a next gen console. “You will be designing, building and texturing the world, have the technical knowledge to achieve great looking results and the skill to get the most from next-gen consoles,” the post read. (Link)

Acknowledging Blackout, Politicians Ditch SOPA

Assuming you have eyeballs, you’ve likely noticed that a number of popular internet destinations have gone dark today in protest of SOPA. Keen to ingratiate themselves with the legions who are now left stranded without the collective wisdom of Wikipedia, a number of politicians have publicly dropped support for the proposed bill, and are theoretically urging others to do the same. (Link)

Anonymous Exacts Revenge for Megaupload Takedown

Shortly after popular file-sharing site, Megaupload, was shut down in a federal bust, Anonymous gathered its forces for what is presumed to be a hastily-assembled DDoS attack on the Department of Justice website. Doj.gov is, at the time of this writing, down and out. RIAA.com, MPAA.org, copright.gov and the Universal Music Group’s website have since been taken down as well. (Link)

Zynga Loses $150 on Every New Paying Customer

Generally speaking, customers who want to give you money are the kind of customers you want to have. Money makes the world go ’round, after all, and it also helps keep businesses afloat. But there’s a tipping point at which what you do to get those customers outweighs their value and Zynga, in the opinion of Sterne Agee analyst Arvind Bhatia, blew past that point about $60 million ago. (Link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-01-19” author: “Clifford Yeager”

Battlefield 3 Developer Seeking An “Anti-Cheat Administrator”

Fast on the heels of a string of player hacking, Battlefield 3 creator DICE is now taking applications for an honest individual to help combat cheating in its games. A new opening on Monster.com shows the company is seeking an “Anti-Cheat Administrator” to analyze player data and help promote fair play. “In our continued effort to keep our games free from cheating, we are now looking for an internet savvy administrator,” The job posting states. “The administrator will compose an absolutely vital function to secure the online experience our games represent by actively [being] a part of the community.”(Link)

THQ Faces NASDAQ Delisting

It’s a clammy tale. One day you’re on top of the world, making truckloads of money cranking out licensed videogames based on lucrative Disney franchises, and the next you’ve got people banging on your door and threatening to kick you off the NASDAQ. That’s the situation at THQ, which was warned today that it has 180 days to get its share price to a minimum of $1 and then keep it there for ten consecutive days. (Link)

Dutch Supreme Court Upholds Virtual Theft Conviction

Back in 2008, a pair of Dutch teenagers were convicted of theft after they “coerced” a 13-year-old boy into transferring an amulet and mask from his RuneScape account to theirs. The Leeuwarden District Court declared in its ruling that “these virtual goods are goods [under Dutch law], so this is theft.” One of the duo took his lumps like a man but the other decided to appeal, based on the question of whether or not things that don’t actually exist in the physical realm can be considered property. (Link)

The Old Republic Becomes the Fastest-Growing MMO Ever

Star Wars: The Old Republic has sold more than two million copies since it launched six weeks ago and now boasts a subscriber base of 1.7 million users, which Electronic Arts says makes it the fastest growing subscription-based MMO ever. And while things are often ugly in the early days of a new MMO, The Old Republic has been a relative rock of stability, with servers “available for more than 99.5 percent of the time outside of scheduled maintenance.” (Link)

Kaz Hirai Becomes Sony CEO, Asks “Holy Sh*t, Now What?”

Sony Computer Entertainment Chairman Kazuo Hirai was recently tapped to take over as president and CEO of the whole Sony Corporation shooting match. He’s got a big job ahead of him; Sony’s a powerhouse corporation but Hirai says that for a number of reasons, the company is sputtering. (Link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-03-05” author: “Steven Sanchez”

10-Year-Old Accidentally Discovers New Explosive Molecule

There are many ways to discover new molecules and their properties, but I doubt many are more delightful or endearing than a ten-year-old fumbling some balls and sticks together before innocently asking her science teacher, “is this real?” … and being right. And that’s exactly what happened in Kenneth Boehr’s fifth-grade science classroom when 10-year-old Clara Lazen approached his desk with a fully constructed tetranitratoxycarbon molecule. (Link)

Valve’s Portal 2 Mod Crashes Down on Skyrim

In celebration of both the Skyrim Creation Kit and its new Steam Workshop, Valve and Bethesda have teamed up to create a very special mod for the award-winning RPG. Titled Fall of the Space Core, Vol. 1, the mod stars Portal 2’s galaxy-obsessed Space Core crashing down into the realm of Skyrim. (Link)

Hello Kitty Meets Hooters

That image on the right? That’s an official Hello Kitty design, not one of those ‘ironic’ knock-offs desperate-to-be-cool types get tattooed on their midriffs. Sanrio has teamed up with Hooters for a Valentine’s day promotion. I’m really not surprised, since her inception in 1974, ‘Kitty White’ has been used to shill just about anything you can think of, from purses, clothes and jewelry to cars, planes, teeth, massagers (both internal and external) and guns. When modern civilization is reduced to ash, and our irradiated descendants are left to sift through the ruins of our culture they’ll probably assume we worshiped the dress-wearing, albino feline as some kind of god, and they will laugh. When they’re not busy fending off giant scorpions and squabbling over the last remaining cans of Hello Kitty-themed spaghetti hoops, that is.(Link)

Tim Schafer Raises $1.3 Million

Tim Schafer has made some of the most loved adventure games in the last twenty years. From contributing to the Monkey Island series to being lead designer on Full Throttle and Day of the Tentacle, Schafer’s time at LucasArts in the 90s would be enough to garner him high praise. Add all that to the list of quirky games the studio he founded, Double Fine, has made (Brutal Legend, Stacking, Costume Quest and Once Upon a Monster to name a few), and Schafer’s resume starts to veer into legendary status. Even with all that credibility, the games Double Fine makes still must pass muster from publishers willing to bankroll production. Witness the story of trying to fund Psychonauts 2 and how it might take an angel investor named Notch to make that game possible. Schafer decided to take matters into his own hands, and give it to his loyal fans, by allowing them to fund his next adventure game project through Kickstarter. The “Double Fine Adventure” pledge started yesterday with a goal of $400,000, and in just one night raised more than $500,000 from nearly 13 thousand backers. Link)

George Lucas Says Greedo Always Shot First

It’s no secret that Star Wars creator George Lucas has a powerful penchant for messing with his movies. One of the most obvious and egregious examples of his inability to leave things alone [and thereby make them worse] is the transformation of Han Solo, through one single, small action, from bad-ass space pirate to innocent practitioner of self-defense. And since that day, among a certain subset of sci-fi nerds who refuse to drink the Kool-Aid, the call has gone out: “Solo shot first!”(Link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-02-10” author: “Yvonne Davis”

European Street Protest Against ACTA Draws Over 30,000

ACTA (known to its friends as the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) is, according to the British government, a “plurilateral treaty that seeks to improve the global enforcement of intellectual property rights” through “common enforcement standards.” However, according to Jim Killock, director of the Open Rights Group, the treaty is “setting up dangerous new pressures to censor the internet to remove users and put pressure on [Internet Service Providers] to start policing for copyright.” Sound familiar? (Link)

Plans to Create a Mildly Irradiated Pop Group Scrapped

The Japanese pop market is ridiculously competitive. Acts can form, reach the peak of their popularity and fade into irrelevance in a matter of weeks. In a bid to make his new group stand out in the crowd, one businessman from the Chiba prefecture put forward plans for a pop group consisting of girls between 10 and 22, recruited from areas most affected by the radioactive fallout from the Fukushima Daiichi power plant meltdown. He intended to name his collection troupe of glow-in-the-dark performers the “Hot☆Spots.” (Link)

Dear Esther Hits It Big

Dear Esther is a bit of an oddity. It sprang to life in 2008 as a Source mod and was reborn yesterday as a longer [although still very short] and far more detailed stand-alone “game.” The word “game” is in quotes because Dear Esther, by most conventional measures, barely qualifies; it’s a story, a metaphor, quite possibly a hallucination, all of which unfolds over a slow journey on a perfectly linear path across a deserted and entirely non-interactive island. It’s most definitely not the sort of thing you’d expect to see burning up the sales charts. (Link)

Australian R18+ Bill Hits a Snag

I’m starting to think that what we’re seeing in Australia’s stumbling shuffle to a functional videogame rating system is not actually an irrational fear of the future but rather the longest-running and most elaborate legislative troll ever perpetrated by a modern Western government. How else can you possibly explain these bizarre shenanigans? Immediately after the bill to amend the Classification Act finally came before Parliament, the first step in what will still be a relatively drawn-out process to get the legislation passed, it was referred to yet another committee for further examination. (Link)

FortressCraft Creator: Minecraft Doesn’t Focus on Creativity

Unless you’ve been living under a giant grey voxelated rock for the past few years, you’ve probably heard about indie-gone-rocket ship Minecraft. Without going into the details of the game’s various successes for the umpteenth time, let’s just say that developer Mojang has made millions upon millions of dollars, and that a hefty percentage of people across the planet are currently too busy building doom castles to even read this post. Up until now, Minecraft has survived primarily as a PC affair, so as the game and its hordes of fans finally prepare an immigration to console-land this Spring, accusatory pointed fingers are starting to land squarely on the platform’s current “craft-king,” FortressCraft, a voxel building game that’s currently the most successful title on XBLIG to date. (Link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-01-26” author: “Patricia Toliver”

The Boondock Saints Becomes Co-op Shooter

Small developer Critical Mass Interactive is like 7-Eleven; it’s not always doing business, but it’s always open. Recently, it opened its doors to an unusual project based on an equally unusual property: a cooperative shooter that continues the story of The Boondock Saints. Fans of quirky cinema will remember the story of Connor and Murphy, two Irish brothers who wage a two-man vigilante war against organized crime. The developers at Critical Mass see the characters as a natural fit for an action game, and promise fans that they’ll do whatever it takes to honor the spirit of the film. (Link)

BioWare Founders Consider Mass Effect MMO

Many Mass Effect fans are sure to feel some mixed emotions when the series’ third installment is released on March 6th. While most gamers understand that an enjoyable story must eventually reach conclusion to actually be enjoyable, the act of reaching that final credit roll remains bittersweet. The characters, their story,your story, is over. Still, BioWare has already said that Mass Effect 3 will not mark the end of the franchise, just the story of Commander Shepard, so the question must be asked: With the primary trilogy over, what’s next? According to a recent interview held by the Penny Arcade Report, perhaps the answer is a new MMO. (Link)

Blizzard Lays Off 600

Following a “review of its business based on current organizational needs,” Blizzard Entertainment has begun implementing cuts of approximately 600 employees from its rolls. The good news is that 90 percent of the layoffs will come from non-development departments, and the World of Warcraft team will not be touched. The bad news, obviously, is that 600 people are, or soon will be, out of work. “Constant evaluation of teams and processes is necessary for the long-term health of any business. Over the last several years, we’ve grown our organization tremendously and made large investments in our infrastructure in order to better serve our global community,” CEO Mike Morhaime said in a statement. (Link)

Princeton Review Names Top 50 Games Schools

For those in the position to do so, choosing the right college or university to attend can be a lovely feeling. You’ve got a menu which you can peruse at leisure. Don’t think about that nasty part where you have to send applications off and then wander around in a haze of self-doubt for the next few months. Nah! Just think of the good part. But which choices are best for aspiring game creators with designs on a college degree? This year marked Princeton Review’s third annual survey of game design courses in the US and Canada aimed at answering that question. (Link)

Notch Gives $3 Million to Mojang Employees

Minecraft is a big deal. From the day I first heard PayPal had suspended Markus “Notch” Persson’s account because he earned too much money too fast, it was clear we were witnessing the birth of something important. Since September 2010, Minecraft has gone through several updates from alpha to beta and release as well as help Notch form an independent studio in his home country of Sweden. Mojang still has a modest staff of less than 20 employees, but in celebration of 5 million sales of Minecraft and the end of tax season, Notch distributed the $3 million in dividends he was entitled to all back to his “Mojangstas”. (Link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-01-14” author: “Sharon Jefferson”

BioWare Responds to Mass Effect 3 Day-One DLC on Disc

Mass Effect 3‘s day-one DLC, From Ashes, has been somewhat of a hot topic for gamers amidst the launch of BioWare’s latest game. At first, it was the mere fact that it existed, then the importance of its content, and finally, the fact that someone found evidence of it on the launch disc, therefore hypothetically proving the developer’s claims of post-launch production less than honest. In the wake of these accusations, one of the game’s producers, Mike Gamble, has decided to clarify his, and the company’s, position. (Link)

Megaupload Founder Claims Many U.S. Government Users

The hammer fell on Megaupload in January, when U.S. government officials unsealed an indictment against its founder, Kim Dotcom, and other employees, claiming that copyright infringement through the service had cost rights holders more than $500 million in lost revenue. Dotcom himself was taken into custody by way of an anti-terrorism style raid on his New Zealand home and of course Megaupload and its related sites were all seized by the U.S. government. (Link)

BBC Points Finger at Iran for Cyberattack

On March 1st, some of the BBC’s servers were subject to a DDoS attack that prevented many sections of the worldwide service from accessing email. At the same time, the BBC detected attempts to block two satellites from broadcasting BBC Persian TV into Iran. The Director General of the BBC, Mark Thompson, is pretty sure that these two events are related, and probably came from a nation that sounds like a certain Flock of Seagulls song. You know the one. (Link)

Obsidian Lost Bonus for Fallout: New Vegas by One Metacritic Point

Deals between game publishers and developers are just as varied as one might find in any other production business, though the details that comprise them often never come to light. In the case of Fallout: New Vegas, the community recently got some rare insight from Chris Avellone, the co-owner of Obsidian, as to the nature of their arrangement with publisher Bethesda. According to a recent Tweet, his company’s work on the post-apocalyptic RPG was to be a one-time payment unless the game garnered a positive response on review aggregator Metacritic. (Link)

Report: Bethesda Working on Elder Scrolls MMO

This news comes from Tom’s Guide, a site that while quite respectable isn’t the sort of place you’d expect to break this kind of story. Still, they claim that anonymous industry sources have told them that Bethesda Softworks “will officially announce Elder Scrolls Online in May 2012.” Not entirely unexpected, given the lucrative potential of the MMO genre and how well the Elder Scrolls setting would lend itself to a vast, open-world online title, right? (Link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-02-18” author: “Maria Hart”

Portal 2 Crowned BAFTA’s “Best Game”

The 2012 British Academy of Film and Television Arts recently wrapped, with Battlefield 3 taking home the award for Online-Multiplayer, and Batman: Arkham City winning for Action. Portal 2 took the … cake, however, beating out Batman: Arkham City, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, L.A. Noire, and others, for both Best Game, and Best Story. Battlefield 3 earned the most awards, claiming the prize for the GAME Award of 2011 and Audio Achievement in addition to Online Multiplayer, while Portal 2, Batman: Arkham City, and LittleBigPlanet 2 took two awards each.(Link)

Artist Uses Urine to Draw Iron Man

Andres Serrano can now retire, safe in the knowledge that at least one other artist is using his own bodily fluids to delight art fans and nauseate everyone else. When an art school graduate, Wong Tin Cheung, noticed blood in his urine, he was inspired to visit his studio rather than his doctor. The artist, who apparently has a sizable collection of Iron Man products, took around two months to find a toilet bowl in the shape of the iconic character’s head. Once he found it, he armed himself with a collection of edible pigmentation and, oh god, produced the piece in time for the competition. (Link)

BioWare Co-Founder Promises Closure for Mass Effect 3

The rage over the ending of Mass Effect 3 is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Dissatisfied gamers by the thousands have howled on internet forums, thrown money at Child’s Play [probably the only good thing to come out of all this] and even filed an FTC complaint against BioWare for false advertising. It’s absolutely crazy – but it’s also vehement enough to attract the attention of some pretty highly-placed folks at BioWare, including none other than Dr. Ray Muzyka, co-founder and now General Manager of EA’s BioWare Label. (Link)

ECA Launches Campaign Against Videogame Warning Labels

Rep. Joe Baca stepped back into the spotlight a couple days ago with his third attempt at imposing legislation in California that would require all videogames rated E (Everyone) or higher to be labeled with warnings that “exposure to violent videogames has been linked to aggressive behavior.” Baca tried the same thing in 2009 and 2011, neither of which went anywhere, and the ECA wants to make sure that his 2012 attempt ends up the same way. (Link)

Mass Effect 3 Outrage Causes Unrelated Game to Change its Ending

As a somewhat unexpected consequence to the recent furor over Mass Effect 3‘s ending, an entirely different, unaffiliated game has rewritten its own final moments while BioWare considers changing its own. PC and iOS tactical shooter Frozen Synapse may have attracted much of its fan-base for its acclaimed multiplayer mode, but the game also boasts a robust single-player experience that, up until recently, didn’t conclude with a troll-faced pony, a top-hat-wearing t-rex, nor a snarky yet, perhaps, important message for gamers. (Link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-01-23” author: “Debra Matarrita”

Buy-Out Saves British Retailer GAME

The past few weeks have been fairly unsettled for The Game Group, Britain’s largest specialist games retailer. The business finally folded early last week, a collapse which resulted in the loss of 2,000 jobs and the closure of hundreds of stores. Now, for the first time in 2012, there’s good news to report: The Game Group’s British operation has been bought over and rescued from bankruptcy by a financial firm, safeguarding the 3,000+ jobs still attached to the company. (Link)

Internet Trolls Face Jail in Arizona

The internet can be a pretty ugly place, especially for those unprepared for its rough-and-tumble ways. The reasons are many and varied, but they can all be boiled down to one essential component of the human condition: people are jerks. If you’ve been playing online for more than, say, a couple of weeks, I can pretty much guarantee that you’ve trolled and been trolled. It’s the nature of the game. (Link)

Hardcore Gamers Sticking to Retail

The widely-held belief that gamers are rushing en masse to embrace a digital future is only partially true, according to a new report from analyst firm Wedbush Morgan. Casual and social gamers are definitely making the move and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future, but it seems that “hardcore” gamers actually have a preference for retail. Because of that, the report says the “packaged goods business” should be viewed by the industry as two distinct sectors: hardcore games, selling primarily on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, and casual, which focus on the Wii and DS. (Link)

Anti-Gay Email Campaign Floods Electronic Arts

In March, the Florida Family Association launched an email campaign against BioWare and Electronic Arts to protest the inclusion of same-sex relationships in Star Wars: The Old Republic. The Family Research Council made similar noises in January, when FRC President Tony Perkins said “the biggest threat to the empire may be homosexual activists” and called on his audience to speak out against them. (Link)

Take-Two Boss Predicts the End of THQ

In response to a massive 47.4% drop in projected income during the fiscal year ending March 31st, Sega’s board of directors has enacted a drastic plan to maneuver the company back toward fiscal stability. The company’s new strategy will involve shrinking the scope of its operation in an effort to “create a smaller company positioned for sustained profitability.” As part of this effort, Sega will halt development on a number of games and, in turn, presumably reduce the number of its employees to accommodate the plan. (Link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-02-16” author: “Wilbert Mceachin”

Association of Teachers and Lecturers Lectures Parents

Fair is fair: It’s probably not a good thing to let an eight-year-old play Grand Theft Auto 4 for hours on end, every day of the week. But the Association of Teachers and Lecturers in the U.K. takes that point a little too far, I think; reminding parents that it’s a good idea to keep an eye on what their kids are playing is one thing, but suggesting that they’re making a mess of it, and that the government needs to step in as a result, is something else entirely. “It’s about reminding parents and carers that they have a very real responsibility for their children and that schools can’t do it alone,” said ATL chief Dr. Mary Bousted. (Link)

Australian Capital Goes R18+

The days of the name “Australia” being synonymous with peals of derisive laughter are drawing to a close and it’s the Legislative Assembly of the Australian Capital Territory that’s pulling the string. The ACT, a self-governing enclave within New South Wales that encompasses the Australian capital city of Canberra, is introducing legislation this week that will implement R18+ ratings for videogames. It will be the first Australian territory to make the move following federal legislation creating the classification, which will come into effect at the beginning of 2013. (Link)

Rumor: Next PlayStation Coming in Late 2013

With rumors flying around from all sides about the next line up of next-gen consoles from Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo, a “credible source” has revealed to Kotaku several details about Sony’s next PlayStation console. The PlayStation 4 is currently code-named the “Orbis”, and will hit stores in late 2013 just in time for the holidays. Kotaku’s source stated that “select developers” have been receiving development kits for the new platform since the beginning of 2012, with the goal of having launch titles ready to go for 2013’s holiday season. (Link)

Anonymous Threatens the Internet With “Operation Blackout”

You might want to stock up on freeze-dried food and 5.56mm ammunition over the next day or so, or at the very least a book or two you’ve been putting off, because Anonymous, the wild ghost riders of the internet, are pulling the plug on March 31. “To protest SOPA, Wallstreet, our irresponsible leaders and the beloved bankers who are starving the world for their own selfish needs out of sheer sadistic fun, on March 31, anonymous will shut the Internet down,” a message on Pastebin warns. (Link)

Sega to Drop Games and Employees During Extreme Restructuring

In response to a massive 47.4% drop in projected income during the fiscal year ending March 31st, Sega’s board of directors has enacted a drastic plan to maneuver the company back toward fiscal stability. The company’s new strategy will involve shrinking the scope of its operation in an effort to “create a smaller company positioned for sustained profitability.” As part of this effort, Sega will halt development on a number of games and, in turn, presumably reduce the number of its employees to accommodate the plan. (Link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-02-24” author: “Carla Mccullough”

Jane Jensen Reveals Her New Game

Earlier this month, Jane Jensen of Gabriel Knight fame hopped aboard the Kickstarter train with Pinkterton Road, an indie game studio built around what she calls “Community Supported Gaming.” Instead of kicking in money for a specific game, supporters donate to the studio as a whole and are given access to a year’s worth of content in return, including any games the studio produces [minimum of one per “season”] and a variety of other bonuses depending on the amount of the donation. (Link)

NASA Announces Bake Sale Fundraiser

You may have heard about recent, dramatic cuts to the budget at NASA, the U.S. agency responsible for all that science-type stuff that goes on up in space. The cuts are particularly bad for the agency’s planetary exploration activities, which covers everything from Mars rovers to probes like Cassini-Huygens; according to io9, the budget for Mars exploration alone was slashed by over 38 percent, effectively bringing further missions to a halt and forcing the cancellation of the ExoMars mission that was being undertaken in conjunction with the European Space Agency. Bill Nye, aka The Science Guy, who also also happens to be the Executive Director of the Planetary Society, said the cuts are indicative of wrong-headed priorities in the U.S. Government. (Link)

Parents Suing Apple Over In-Game Purchasing

After months of legal wrangling, a group of concerned parents has now been given permission to sue Apple for “manipulating” their kids into spending large amounts of real-world cash on virtual in-app objects (mostly Smurfberries) in various iOS games. Led by attorney Garen Meguerian, the group is alleging that the “addictive” nature of some iOS games drives their kids to buy in-game items without really knowing what’s going on. (Link)

Codemasters Says “Racing is Everything”

Codemasters isn’t an industry heavyweight by any stretch of the imagination but it’s been around since 1986, it employs 700 people and it’s put out a lot of games over the years, some of which are actually pretty good. Its best-known titles tend to be racing games, like the Dirt and F1 franchises, but it’s also responsible for games like Bodycountand Operation Flashpoint. But no longer! Codemasters announced today that it is moving to a racing-only formula, beginning with the launch of a new label, Codemasters Racing, which will serve as the home for the Dirt, GRID and F1 franchises. As for non-racing games, well, there are no more non-racing games. (Link)

Diablo III Beta Goes Public This Weekend

Up until now, the lands of Sanctuary have had a decently strict immigration policy, but with a May 15th full release date fast approaching, special beta keys be damned; Blizzard is opening up Diablo 3 to everyone with an internet connection for exactly 69 hours and 59 minutes. Would-be Witch Doctors and Demon Hunters everywhere, rejoice! If you want to take part in the weekend madness, head over to Battle.net and start downloading the client. Then, beginning today at 12:01 P.M. PDT, you can grind a character all the way up to level 13 until Monday, April 23 at 10:00 A.M. PDT (Link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-02-22” author: “James Smith”

Microsoft Makes Sonar Work Like Kinect

A few years ago, the combined power of a camera, a microphone and the software know-how of Kinect wowed us with its translation of simple gestures and voice commands into somethign the Xbox 360 could understand. Now, Microsoft – along with researchers at the University of Washington – have figured out a way for us to have all the gesture recognition of Kinect using existing PC peripherals. The application is called SoundWave and it operates using sonar detection similar to how a bat or dolphin can “see”. (Link)

U.S. Judge Delays German Xbox Injunction

The legal dispute between Microsoft and Motorola, which is in the midst of being acquired by software giant Google, is getting ugly. The two companies have been locked in a battle over patent rights owned by Motorola and used in mainstream Microsoft products including the Xbox 360 and Windows 7 operating system; Microsoft alleges that Motorola is demanding unreasonable licensing fees for its patents on technologies that have become industry standards that could reach as much as $4 billion per year, while Motorola says Microsoft gave up its right to those patents on reasonable terms when it skipped the negotiation process and went straight to the courtroom. (Link)

Anonymous Tackles Virgin Media Over Pirate Bay Blocking

Well, here we go again. Last week Virgin Media became the first ISP to comply with a high court ruling that orders internet service providers in the UK to block access to torrent sharing site, The Pirate Bay. Other ISPs are expected to follow suit shortly. In response, Anonymous has used a DDOS attack to take down Virginmedia.com. “#Anonymous have just taken down #VirginMedia website again because of their involvement in the #Censorship of The Pirate Bay #TPB #OpTPB,” tweeted Anonymous UK. (Link)

Miyamoto Unimpressed by Modern Games

“I think it’s the lack of time in general,” he told The Guardian. “And maybe I don’t see so many titles that I find fascinating enough that I want to spend time playing. Time is precious and a game has to be worthwhile, right?” “Another problem is that there are so many games on the market today that it’s difficult to find the right one,” he continued. “In many ways I think I am in a similar place to the average game player. This is one of the greatest challenges for the industry right now.” (Link)

Square Enix Sued Over Kane and Lynch 2

A Chinese lawyer has filed a suit against Square Enix over its terrible third person shooter sequel, Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days. In it, he accuses the company of “damaging the image of Chinese people,” “mocking China and the Chinese people,” and “causing people to misunderstand China.” The lawyer is demanding an apology, as well compensation from both developer, IO Interactive, and Square Enix to the tune of 10,000 yuan or around $1600. (Link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-01-26” author: “Bruce Newsham”

Blizzard Cleans Up GAME’s Mess

When the Australian branch of GAME entered administration yesterday, it appeared that gamers who had pre-ordered Diablo III (or any other game for that matter) from the company were fresh out of luck. Fortunately, Blizzard, recognizing the opportunity to earn some good press, are footing the bill. Provided gamers have kept their pre-order receipt, they can buy the game again and Blizzard will refund the amount they paid to Game Australia. (Link)

Capcom Says It’s Done With On-Disc DLC

In general, most gamers don’t mind the idea of DLC – it’s content you can experience after you’ve finished everything else, and it’s a way for the developer to keep making money off their product. Day-one DLC is slightly more controversial but still accepted, because it’s usually developed after work on the “main” game has started to wind up. But for many gamers, DLC that’s already on the shipped disc is unforgivable. It was completed! It’s right there on the disc! So why can’t I play it? (Link)

DDoS Attack Scuttles The Pirate Bay

The popular file-sharing website The Pirate Bay has been offline for nearly a day following a deliberate denial-of-service attack from an unknown source, according to its official Facebook page. Since the attack, The Pirate Bay has been relying exclusively on its Facebook profile to relay information to the public. It first reported site issues nearly a day ago, suggesting it had heard reports from users that the site was inaccessible. (Link)

38 Studios Pays the State But Not Its Workers

The crunch appears to be coming to Curt Schilling’s 38 Studios, which is “in the process” of making an overdue payment of $1.125 million to the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation but, because of that, cannot meet its payroll obligations for the week. According to WPRI, employees at the studio “looked glum” but could not comment on whether or not they’d been paid this week. Sources have told Joystiq that the Kingdoms of Amalur developer has also terminated the employment of all temporary and contract workers. (Link)

EA Offers Free Origin Distribution For Crowd-Funded Games

Game development is an expensive business, even for small indie titles; just ask the guys behind Star Command if you don’t believe it. Every dollar counts. So to help relieve some of that pressure, EA is now offering 90 days of free distribution on Origin for any complete, crowd-funded game. “The public support for crowd-funding creative game ideas coming from small developers today is nothing short of phenomenal,” said Origin SVP David DeMartini. “It’s also incredibly healthy for the gaming industry. (Link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-01-17” author: “William Auxier”

China: We’re Beating the Pirates

The Business Software Alliance recently declared China the world’s worst offender when it comes to software piracy. Current numbers from the BSA say China has a piracy rate of 77%, a 2% drop from 2009’s numbers, and that it’s cost the software industry some £5.7 billion. China, however, says it’s got its peg-legged, parrot-owner infestation under control. State-run newspaper, China Daily, reported that, according to consultancy, China Labs, the rate of software piracy in the nation dropped to 38% in 2011. (Link)

Curt Schilling Points Finger at Rhode Island Governor

Curt Schilling, the former Red Sox ace who founded 38 Studios in 2006, hasn’t had much to say about its rapid spiral downward over the past month. He’s kept quiet so far in order to avoid upsetting “sensitive” efforts to save the company, but now he’s speaking out, and he doesn’t have many good things to say about his erstwhile business partner. “The Governor is not operating in the best interest of the company by any stretch, or the taxpayers, or the state,” Schilling told the Providence Journal. (Link)

Xbox 360 Owns Nearly Half of Console Market

Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft’s Chief Marketing Officer, claims that Xbox 360 makes up 47% of the total console market, attributing that success to both the Kinect and Xbox LIVE. Xbox LIVE alone claims more than 40 million members, and Mehdi’s figures put retail sales of the 360 since launch at more than $56 billion. “To date,” said Mehdi, outlining plans for the future, “our success with Xbox has been led by a box in the living room…With Xbox on Windows 8 devices, we rapidly accelerate the reach of Xbox entertainment from more than 60 million people to hundreds of millions of people worldwide.” (Link)

The Iron Patriot Joins Iron Man 3

If you think the Iron Patriot armor looks like a mash-up of Iron Man and Captain America, you’re not wrong. The suit was “designed” by Norman Osborn, AKA the Green Goblin, who, after being installed as the head of the government-sanctioned post-“Civil War” Avengers by the forgiving magic of comic books, decided that the best way to earn the trust and love of the public was to slap it in the face with a big dose of heavy-handed symbolism. So he grabbed an old Iron Man suit out of Tony Stark’s closet, painted it up in the Cap’s colors and put it on in the name of truth, justice and all that other good stuff. (Link)

Korean Officials Raid Blizzard

Blizzard’s been taking a lot of guffola over Diablo 3, but nowhere is the ride rougher than in South Korea, where an investigation into possible violations of the country’s electronic commerce and commercial contracts laws is being carried out by the country’s Fair Trade Commission. The FTC actually raided Blizzard’s offices earlier this week, seizing documents and other evidence as it seeks to determine whether or not any laws have been broken. (Link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-02-06” author: “Marie Tainter”

Study Concludes That Exercise Games Aren’t Helping Kids

If you’re of the camp that thinks playing games like Dance Dance Revolution will help gamers young and old stay in shape, think again. A new study disputes the claims that exercise games like Wii Sports encourage more active behavior in kids, and instead reveals they’re more likely to slack off in other ways to make up for playing hours of Wii Fit. The study, conducted by the Children’s Nutrition Research Center at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas chose several children ranging from 9 to 12-years-of-age who had a body mass index that was above average and lived in vidoegame console free households. (Link)

Two LulzSec Members Plead Guilty To DDOS Attacks

Today, Ryan Cleary, 20, and Jake David, 19, both told the Southwark Crown Court that they took part in the DDOS attacks on Sony, Nintendo, 20th Century Fox, the NHS and the British branch of News Corp. Cleary pleaded guilty to six of the eight charges laid against him, while David pleaded guilty to two out of four. Two other men, Ryan Ackroyd and an unnamed 17-year-old, pleaded not guilty to similar charges. “Arrest us. We dare you,” the (ugh) hacktivist group tweeted back in July of last year. The authorities did exactly that. Several alleged members of the group were arrested after a joint investigation by Scotland Yard and the FBI. (Link)

Submerged “UFO” Cripples Nearby Electronics

Back in the summer of 2011, explorers discovered a large, disc-like object lying 285 feet below the surface of the Baltic Sea. It was estimated to be about 20 meters in diameter, with a 200 meter flattened “trail” behind it, as though it had crashed and ground to a halt, and looked like nothing so much as the Millennium Falcon come to grief. Nobody knows what it is, but further investigation has revealed some rather baffling weirdness. The object appears to be giving off some kind of interference that cripples nearby electronic devices. (Link)

Uncut Anime Coming to a Major Game Console

This fall, Viz will be launching a 24-hour anime service called “Neon Alley” on one of the major game consoles. A US$6.99 per month subscription to the service – assuming you live in Canada or the US – will net you uncut, dubbed and HD (where available) anime shows and movies, as well as original content in the form of news and behind-the-scenes footage. The service will play host to the English dub premieres of Tiger & Bunny, Inuyasha: The Final Act, Zetman, Lagrange – The Flower of Rin-ne and new episodes of endless, shonen punch-festival, Naruto Shippūden. (Link)

EA’s New Games May Help Put You in College

Electronic Arts has partnered with non-profit organization Institute of Play and the Electronic Software Association to establish a “games lab” for making games to be used in classrooms across the USA. The Games, Learning and Assessment (GLASS) lab, announced at the Aspen Ideas Festival, will be researching the skills students need to succeed at a collegiate level. The lab’s developers will then proceed to make new games and modify existing ones based on the results, possibly with one of EA’s bountiful IPs sprinkled on top. (Link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-02-21” author: “Angie Gass”

Australian Parliament Passes R18+ Legislation

Another day, another step closer to a seat at the big table for Australian gamers thanks to yesterday’s passage of legislation allowing for the creation of an R18+ videogame rating in the country. You probably already know this but in case you’ve somehow missed out, Australia has R18+ ratings for movies – hence the amusing cornucopia of hardcore porn titles on the Australian Government’s Classification website – but videogames, since they’re just for kids, top out at MA15+. (Link)

Voyager 1 Spacecraft About to Leave Solar System

Launched in 1977, NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft was charged with several space-tasks prior to leaving Earth. It was to pass by Jupiter and Saturn, for instance, and send back information on what it saw. It was to keep safe its golden record, an audiovisual introduction to humanity compiled under the guidance of Dr. Carl Sagan, unless it was able to pass the record to any friendly space aliens. Now, 33 years on, Voyager 1 has excelled at first two tasks; just as well, too, since it’s about to leave the solar system. (Link)

“Flame” Spy Virus May Be of U.S./Israeli Origin

When the sneaky spy virus nicknamed “Flame” was first discovered by security experts at Kaspersky Labs, nobody seemed entirely sure which nation state was responsible for creating and distributing the malware. Suspicion fell immediately on the United States and Israel after researchers discovered a raft of similarities between Flame and Stuxnet, a different spy-virus known to be of American origin. Now, in a new twist, the finger of blame has been squarely pointed at the U.S. and Israel by anonymous “Western officials with knowledge of the effort.” (Link)

Sony Suspending the PS Store in Korea

The PlayStation Store and all related services for the PS3 will be suspended in South Korea from June 29th onward in order to comply with the nation’s new “Game Industry Promotion Act”. The new law is to go into effect on July 1st and states that people under the age of 18 cannot be required to give their real name or age in order to sign up for online services. PSN currently requires a name and age from all users who sign up, and as Sony doesn’t have enough time to alter the sign up process before the end of the month, it’s elected to shut down the service entirely until it can be changed to comply with the new law. (Link)

Netflix Takes Charge of Data Delivery

Think back to 2007. Think really hard. A lot of things we take for granted weren’t around. Demon’s Souls was still two years off, The Dark Knight wouldn’t emerge until the following summer, and a Netflix subscriber could access only DVDs. Everything changed in 2008 when Netflix introduced streaming content, and proceeded to expand its service so rapidly over the next four years that many people canceled their cable subscriptions outright. However, Netflix’s success came at a cost, namely that of transmitting ever-increasing amounts of data through third parties. (Link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-02-13” author: “Doris Saunders”

NASA Researches Dark Energy with Spy Satellite

If the used game debate is anything to go by, people have really mixed feelings about buying secondhand goods. One of the most common defenses of used games is that they’re very affordable to people on a budget. Imagine, then, that your budget has been slashed and your favorite toy is about to break. NASA recently found itself in such a position, but the National Reconnaissance Office was there to help. Two space telescopes – just as big as the Hubble, but with better hardware – came into NASA’s hands via the American intelligence organization. Instead of documenting the Earth below it, one of the telescopes will turn heavenwards to research dark energy, the theoretical substance that keeps the universe expanding at an accelerating pace. (Link)

“Flame” Virus Freaking Out Cybersecurity Personnel Worldwide

Despite what the delightful narrator from Fallout has to say on the subject, war is indeed changing. Incursions into the territory of a sovereign state no longer necessitate the use of spies and armies; technology has taken the mantle, leaving behind traces of code in the places formerly occupied by whispers and manila envelopes. The sneakiest weapon in this new kind of war is the data-stealing virus, and the world’s all up in arms about one in particular this week: Flame. (Link)

NASA Compiles Stunning Transit of Venus Video

Astrophysicist and well-known badass Neil deGrasse Tyson once calculated that you couldcook a 16″ pepperoni pizza in nine seconds on the surface of Venus. For what it’s worth, the sun could similarly cook Venus – about 1,443,000 of it at once, if need be. These two galactic hotbeds converged in a rare cosmic ballet on June 5, 2012 when observers on Earth observed the transit of Venus across the sun. Using terabytes upon terabytes of photographs and videos, NASA compiled a video of the event, showing the sun’s radiance across a spectrum of colors and Venus as a haunting, ephemeral silhouette. (Link)

Wii U Miiverse Will Use Human Screening

Gamers are, in my experience, prone to the desultory expletive, the occasional racial slur and the odd crudely-drawn phallus et scrotum combo. Their admirable determination to be base and awful to one another over the internet, no matter how hard service providers try to stop them, is legendary. So how does Nintendo intend to keep its Miiverse social network, which allows players to post drawings and scribbles they create on the Wii U’s touch screen controller, clean and family friendly? According to Nintendo’s chief executive, Satoru Iwata, Nintendo is going to use three separate systems. (Link)

Sony: Wii U Launch Lead Isn’t Important

At least, according to Sony’s Senior VP of Product Development and Worldwide Studios, Scott Rohde. When he was asked whether the fact Nintendo is well on its way to releasing the Wii U, while Sony has yet to announce a next-gen console would present any challenges, Rohde responded with an emphatic no. “Not at all. That’s the simple answer,” he told Joystiq. “In very similar fashion to the way I’m talking about game development, we have a very strong vision in what we believe we’re gonna do for the next generation. And we’re not talking about it at all yet.” (Link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-03-11” author: “Beverly Johnson”

Gamestop Makes the Worst to Work For List

The worst job ever story; everyone’s got one, and far too many of them are inspired by people’s experiences in retail. The business news site 24/7 Wall St – a Delaware-based internet news company financed by institutions like MSNBC and The Huffington Post – has collected employee review data and, from that data, extracted a list of the worst employers in America. Gamestop made the list at #10. 24/7 Wall St only considered those companies with 300 or more negative Glassdoor reviews, looking specifically for the bottom 10% of the total pool. (Link)

FTC Slams Facebook for “Deceptive” App Scheme

As well as providing a platform for the products of Zynga and its corporation-sized ilk, Facebook has spent the past few years offering its services to small, less conspicuous app developers. To help these smaller devs stand out and make users feel more comfortable with them, Facebook offered to verify their apps for a fee of $375 ($175 for student or non-profit projects) and provide them with badges intended to let users know that their apps were trustworthy. Nice as this sounds, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has now revealed that Facebook never actually investigated or scrutinized any of the apps paying the verification fee. (Link)

Larian Offers $5000 Reward For Stolen PCs

On the list of “crappy ways to kick off your big, hometown-ish videogame convention,” this has to be close to the top: Larian, the small Belgian studio behind the Divinity RPG franchise, had two PCs stolen from its booth in the Gamescom business hall. The missing PCs contained early builds of Divinity: Dragon Commander and Divinity: Original Sin. This obviously isn’t up there with, say, the Half-Life 2 source code theft, and Larian is going about its business at Gamescom with backup systems, but it’s the principle of the thing that’s at stake. (Link)

EA: “There Is No Feud With Valve”

When EA launched its Origin digital distribution platform in June 2011, it caused quite a stir in the PC gaming crowd.EA titles vanished from Steam’s store, retroactively making them Origin exclusives. As Origin grew, EA continued to widen the gap by criticizing some of Steam’s business practices – EA’s David DeMartini has said that Steam’s frequent sales “cheapen intellectual property” that developers work hard to create. However, the atmosphere of bitter competition between the two digital giants may be exaggerated, according to EA COO Peter Moore. (Link)

eBay Bans Spells, Potions, and Curses

These are hard times for wizards. With the economy tanked and unemployment soaring, it’s always the incidental commodities that seem to lose consumer interest first. Whether that means passing on the day’s second latte, saving gas by biking to the office once a week, or forgoing a monthly spell of virility, people are making hard cuts everywhere they can. For wizards, witches, warlocks, voodoo-meisters, curse-casters, and general hex-doers, things are about to get even worse; eBay is closing down one of their few, precious means of peddling potions, granting wishes, and forcing magical love via the internet to deserving Muggles everywhere. (Link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-01-15” author: “James Burton”

Venture Capitalist Bails Out OnLive

Following last week’s string of rumors over the future of games streaming service OnLive, its new holding company has clarified some details in an official statement. On August 17, technological investors Lauder Partners bought out all of OnLive’s assets and transferred them to a company intending to trade under the same name. The assets include all of the service’s intellectual property and technology, but not stocks and shares. The company expects users to remain unaffected by the changes, stating that all of OnLive’s game rights will remain with the new company, and there should be no interruption to the service. (Link)

EA “Standing Up for the Industry” by Suing Zynga

One of the recurring themes in “monster vs. monster” movies is that no matter which terrifying creature wins, humanity will lose. Whether it’s Alien vs. Predator or King Kong vs. Godzilla, there’s always the sense that once the big monster brawl has concluded, the victor will turn its hungry eyes back towards a battered human race who championed it only because it was their last hope. Some gamers will no doubt feel the same way about EA’s current lawsuit against Zynga. Electronic Arts states that Zynga borrowed too liberally from The Sims Social in order to create TheVille, and by taking the social gaming giant to court, EA can strike a blow for all original, serious-minded game designers. (Link)

Ubisoft Puts PC Piracy Rate at 93-95%

Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot claims that the percentage of people who bother to pay for their games is such that it makes as much sense to go free-to-play as it does to sell boxed product. According to his figures the PC piracy rate is 93-95%, which means that the same amount of people pay for their boxed game – about five to seven percent – as contribute in a free-to-play model. Given that fact, there’s no sense in hanging on to a physical product business model when boxed games are more expensive to produce and ship. “[Free-to-play is] a way to get closer to your customers,” said Guillemot, “to make sure you have a revenue. On PC it’s only around five to seven percent of the players who pay for F2P, but normally on PC it’s only about five to seven per cent who pay anyway, the rest is pirated. (Link)

DoA Dev Says Jiggle Physics Are Part of Japanese Culture

In a recent interview the head of Team Ninja, Yosuke Hayashi, talked about Dead or Alive 5, and what players could expect from the most recent addition to the franchise. Dead or Alive has been notorious for its portrayal of female characters, and naturally the conversation turned to their portrayal in the latest game. What could players expect? Hayashi was unrepentant, claiming that the representation of women in DoA was a part of Japanese culture and Team Ninja wasn’t about to change its ways. “For us, within our culture,” said Hayashi, “we’re showing women like that, and we’re trying to make them look attractive. (Link)

Facebook: Your Cat Is a Public Figure, Not a Person

Cats are amazing creatures. They play nasty pranks, escape from dogs on surfboards, and really, really like treats.Perhaps that’s the reason why millions of cat owners have decided to feature their beloved felines on Facebook with profiles of their own, often complete with way too many pictures, aribitrary political rambling, and non-stop torrential updates of what they’re eating for lunch. Well, Mark Zuckerberg, it seems, is not amused. According to an updated regulatory filing, soon, Facebook will be closing down over 80 million fake accounts, a large portion of which to be what the site considers “misclassified” pet profiles. (Link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-03-13” author: “James Fiorita”

“Unbelievably High” Android Piracy Drives Dev to Free-To-Play

When Mad Finger Games first released their new mobile game Dead Trigger, it hoped to reach as many people as possible. What it didn’t expect was to achieve that goal through piracy. Despite the game’s low price point of a single dollar, piracy figures for the Android version went through the roof while official installs were practically non-existent. In a last-ditch effort to save the game, the developer switched out the paid Android version for a free-to-play model that has since shown tremendous success, bringing to light some of the difficulties in publishing for the mobile platform. (Link)

Gamigo Hack Leaks Eight Million Accounts

Gamigo is a German online game company that tends to hang out in the more casual side of town, so you’d be forgiven for not noticing, or not remembering, the March intrusion into its user database. But it was a big one, and four months down the road more than 8.2 million unique email addresses and 11 million encrypted passwords taken in the attack have turned up on hacking site Inside Pro. “It’s the largest leak I’ve ever actually seen,” PwnedList founder Steve Thomas told Forbes. “When this breach originally happened, the data wasn’t released, so it wasn’t a big concern. Now eight million email addresses and passwords have been online, live data for any hacker to see.” (Link)

Notch In No Hurry To Bring Minecraft To Steam

The biggest indie PC game of all time, the most popular PC digital distribution platform on the planet – it’s a natural fit, right? And yet if you go poking around on Steam, you’ll eventually notice that Minecraft isn’t there. Why not? A year ago, Notch explained on his blog that while he’s a big fan of Steam as a gamer, the platform limits a lot of what he can do as a developer, particularly with regard to user interactions and DLC sales. Those limitations have since been pretty much eliminated and yet Notch remains wary, saying that Mojang is still reluctant to submit Minecraft to Steam “without knowing more about what we want to do.” (Link)

Ubisoft Enlists Teens to Market Upcoming Game

Breaking into a creative industry, like games, can be tough under normal circumstances, but what do you do if your background – educational, financial, or otherwise – is making things even more difficult? A new initiative called Commercial Break aims to address that very question by helping under-privileged youths get into advertising, and international publishing heavyweight Ubisoft is the initiative’s first client. Speaking about the new partnership, Head of Brand Marketing Mark Slaughter stated that Ubisoft is “committed to making a contribution to helping young, creative individuals get onto a career path that makes use of their talent.” (Link)

UK High Court Rules Twitter Terror Joke Just a Joke

Paul Chambers, the man who Tweeted about blowing up Robin Hood Airport in Sheffield and was convicted of sending menacing threats under Communications Act legislation, has had his appeal against conviction granted by the UK High Court. Lord Chief Justice Judge and his fellow Justices agreed that the Tweet – “Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!” – could not, on its face, constitute a credible threat. Chambers, who lost two jobs and was heavily fined as a result of his previous convictions, said he was “relieved and vindicated” by the result. (Link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-02-02” author: “Holli Mitkowski”

DICE: FPS Genre Lacks Innovation

Today’s FPS market is all about present-day warfare, with more to come on the Christmas horizon. As game publishers attempt to release franchise titles to a regular schedule and bolster existing ones with DLC, DICE general manager Karl Magnus Troedsson took aim at first person shooters, criticising them for lacking innovation. Troedsson believes that the stagnant technical evolution of the genre is failing to hold the attention of FPS gamers, whom he considers to be a more “hardcore” audience with extremely high expectations. (Link)

Help Choose Which Indie Games Get on Steam

Ever since Valve vastly extended the number of third-party titles offered on Steam back in 2006, indie games have had a bit of a tough time joining the party. While winners of the Independent Games Festival usually make an appearance, the sheer volume of indie titles out there divided by Valve’s limited validation resources means a low percentage make it to the popular distribution platform. That’s going to change soon though, with Valve’s new community-rating service for indie games called “Steam Greenlight.” (Link)

Gloves Translate Sign Language to Speech

Remember that 1995 movie Congo with the gorilla that could talk using sign language and a voice modulator? Well, it only took about 20 years, but the technology to make such a device real finally caught up to campy Hollywood films. At Microsoft’s annual design competition called the Imagine Cup, a group from the Ukraine won the Software Design category for EnableTalk. In truth, the pair of gloves covered in sensors wouldn’t have done much without the software to translate hand movements to something a computer could understand, and then communicate with Microsoft’s voice programming API to export actual speech. That all of that happens in real time using simple hardware is pretty amazing, and EnableTalk earned the Ukrainian Quadsquad team $25,000. (Link)

Xbox 720 May Feature PC-Like Customization

Remember those Xbox 720 design documents from 2010 that leaked onto the internet? Whether you believe they’re genuine or not, it’s hard to deny they hint at things that Microsoft would love to implement in its next console. Microsoft’s takedown notices may not have been the confirmation on the matter we were hoping for, but the discovery of a US patent application has just reignited the issue. Four months after the internal documents were created, Microsoft filed patents for a scalable hardware system with certain design concepts bearing a curious resemblance to ideas from the Xbox 720 documents. (Link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-02-07” author: “Kathryn Schuch”

“Shag A Gamer” Cuts to the Chase

Shag A Gamer is not a dating site. Dating sites, in theory at least, are for people looking for dates. Shag A Gamer is for people who want to shag. And “shag,” as anyone who’s ever watched an Austin Powers movie can tell you, is an English colloquialism for doing the nasty. The horizontal mambo. Chesterfield rugby. Playing hide the pickle. Taking ol’ One-Eye to the optometrist. Riding the skin boat to Tuna Town. I’m talking about bumping uglies, people. I’m talking about sex. Shag A Gamer was launched by the same people who founded Date A Gamer, after they noticed that a lot of members were using the site for drive-by banging rather than actual dating. (Link)

Engineers Propose Interstellar Spacecraft Fueled by Lasers

Although it’s a beautiful concept, the reality of interstellar space travel is one that features an enormous amount of practical hurdles. One of the biggest problems presented by the “assuming we don’t invent faster-than-light travel soon” school of far-flung dreams is the issue of fuel; namely, how do you supply a craft with sufficient fuel for a massive journey without weighing it down too much? Now, in a neat twist, a nonprofit interstellar research foundation has brought us closer to solving that problem: Icarus Interstellar has drawn up a working theory for an interstellar spacecraft, known as “The Vacuum to Antimatter-Rocket Interstellar Explorer System” (VARIES), that is powered by a laser that generates antimatter fuel out of the vacuum of space. (Link)

Advertisers Choose Android Over iOS

When smartphones first entered the marketplace, you had two realistic choices: Apple’s iPhone or some other phone. The iOS platform dominated mobile markets for years following its original launch, but recently the tide has slowly turned as the competition learned from Apple and upgraded their own services accordingly. Now a new report is suggesting that Google’s Android operating system has become the most popular platform for smartphone users and advertisers alike, with Android gaining a 46% global majority of ad impressions in Q2 2012. (Link)

State Department Proposes “Trolling” Web-Based Islamic Extremists

In years gone by, Islamic extremists and would-be terrorists would communicate with one another using tangible means: they’d exchange cassette or video tapes of their leaders’ rousing speeches, for example, or hoard secret pamphlets laced with just the right kind of rhetoric. Back then, the best way to nip their violent dreams in the bud was to seize their contraband; but now that terrorists are increasingly communicating and recruiting using the internet, what can we do to turn them away from the not-so-straight path of extremism? According to the State Department, the solution might be to prod them into moderate thinking by politely trolling their internet spaces. (Link)

EA Joins Gay Marriage Coalition

Love or hate EA, you have to admit that when it comes to LGBT rights and same-sex marriages, they’ve taken a strong public position. Whether in the form of an “It Gets Better” video starring EA employees, openly celebrating Pride month, or responding to an anti-homosexual email campaign, the company has refused to back down from a position of equal civil rights for all. Now the games publisher is hoping to put the issue before the Ninth Circut Court of Appeals via an amicus brief asking that the Defense of Marriage Act be overturned as unconstitutional. Under the Defense of Marriage Act, no state or political subdivision is required to recognize a same-sex marriage or union if it occurred in another state. (Link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-02-16” author: “Floyd Royer”

BioWare Reaps Forgiveness From FTC Complaint

You may not know who Spike Murphy is, but you almost certainly know what he did. He’s the guy who filed an official complaint with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission over the ending of Mass Effect 3, which, as you may have heard, not everyone was entirely happy with. Murphy’s complaint was incredibly polarizing; some saw it as a legitimate and even necessary stand against a bumbling, indifferent corporate monolith, while to others it was simply gamer entitlement run wild. (Link)

Court Upholds Ban on Samsung Galaxy Tablet

Samsung recently faced a ban on sales of its tablet in the US, as a result of its ongoing patent dispute with Apple over alleged design similarities between the iPad and the Galaxy Tab. Samsung immediately filed a motion to stay, but its hopes were dashed. Not only is the ban still in place, but the judge also slapped an injunction on sales of the Galaxy Nexus smartphone. (Link)

Scientist Invents World’s First Perfectly Healthy Pizza

Pizza is a surprisingly complex food. It’s delicious, relatively easy to make, and can be created with a near infinite variety of toppings. You may prefer other meals, but the odds are pretty low that anyone will build specialized restaurants around them that deliver right to your doorstep. The only problem is that eating copious amounts of pizza on a regular basis lends itself to an early death via heart disease or diabetes. But since nobody in their right mind was ever going to stop eating pizza to prevent little things like heart attacks, a Scottish team at Glasgow University has done a great service to humankind: they designed “nutritionally balanced” pizzas that can be consumed for every meal without putting yourself into a coma. (Link)

Petition Demands Female Jarheads in Aliens: Colonial Marines.

Vasquez, Ferro and Dietrich were all state of the badass art in the 1986 flick Aliens, my favorite of the Alien franchise, but you won’t be able to play anyone quite like them in the upcoming Aliens: Colonial Marines. Gearbox has apparently decided to make all playable characters exclusively male, and that just doesn’t sit right with a gamer by the name of Melissa K. So she did what people do when they’re aggrieved on the internet: she started a petition. “While we fully support Gearbox, we would like to request the inclusion of playable females. TheAliens franchise is dominated by strong females such as Ripley, Vasquez, Ferro, Dietrich and most importantly, The Queen,” the petition says. (Link)

Human Element to Use Real-World Resource Gathering

Former Infinity Ward creative strategist and Robotoki founder Robert Bowling is promoting his upcoming game Human Element, a zombie apocalypse game that will be both cross-platform and cross-genre. While details about the game are pretty scarce, Bowling recently opened up about cross-platform features he’d like to implement. Specifically, he wants to see the actions of mobile users in the real world impact how resources are gathered in the game world by linking Google Maps and Foursquare to your character. (Link)

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-02-21” author: “Georgina Lee”

“Massive” Social Gaming Layoffs Predicted For 2012

The social gaming scene has always been kind of a mess. On one hand, you had Square Enix proclaiming that social gaming is the future; a few months later, PopCap declared that the golden era of social gaming is over. A little over a year ago, Scott Jon Siegel urged game designers to embrace the potential of the social arena to create “unanticipated golden poo,” but gamers complain that most of it is just, well, poo.

Rumor: Iran Responding to Battlefield 3 with Anti-Israel Game

As was expected by many, Battlefield 3 was banned fairly quickly in Iran for its depiction of American soldiers roaming around Tehran looking for nuclear weaponry. Now, the next stage of Iran’s response to the game has been announced by the director of the country’s National Computer Game Foundation (NCGF). It’s a game called Attack on Tel Aviv, and nothing is known about it other than its title.

Apple’s Founding Contract Sells For $1.59 Million

During an auction at Sotheby’s in New York, Apple’s original three-page founding documents sold for a whopping $1,594,500.00 after being estimated by the auction house to bring only $150,000. According to Sotheby’s, there were five bidders vying for the purchase, ending in a 1.35 million winning bid. A 12% buyer’s premium added at point of sale took the total to the final monster it was.

Witcher 2 Dev Defends Asking €1000 From Pirates

CD Projekt, the Polish studio behind the acclaimed Witcher series has sent letters demanding nearly €1000 (about $1,300) to numerous German gamers found to have pirated its most recent game. The developer is unapologetic for the response, claiming it only affects those it’s “100% sure have downloaded [the] game illegally.”

Captain America Creator Dies

The comics world has lost one of its greatest writers and innovators. Joe Simon – born Hymie Simon, 1913 – moved to New York City in the 30s where he met artist Jack Kirby. The pair became friends as they both tried to break into writing comic books, getting their big break on writing a new character for Timely Comics …

title: “The Week In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-02-26” author: “Reba Bailey”

Court Orders UK ISPs to Block Pirate Bay

Last November, the British Phonographic Industry (or BPI) asked a number of UK-based ISPs – Sky, Everything Everywhere, TalkTalk, O2 and Virgin Media – to voluntarily restrict access to the Sweden-based Pirate Bay. The ISPs in question refused to do so unless there was a court order mandating the action; the BPI then sought (and obtained) said order in a ruling handed down today. “Sites like The Pirate Bay destroy jobs in the UK and undermine investment in new British artists,” said a BPI statement. (Link)

Crytek Dev Backpedals on Used Games Hate

Crytek’s director of creative development, Rasmus Hojengaard, seems to have had a change of heart regarding the current industry whipping boy, used games. Last week, he told CVG that if the rumor that next-gen consoles are to prevent players from playing used games is true, then it would be “awesome” from a business perspective. He went on to add that it’s “weird that [second-hand] is still allowed because it doesn’t work like that in any other software industries, so it would be great if they could somehow fix that issue as well.” (Link)

Germany Bans the Xbox 360

A “shock ruling” in a patent dispute between Microsoft and Motorola involving the H.264 video codec means the company will no longer be allowed to distribute its Xbox 360 console to retailers in Germany and might even have to recall systems currently in stock and destroy them. The injunction against the distribution of “key Microsoft products” in the country also encompasses Windows 7 discs and the digital distribution of Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player. (Link)

Black Ops II Day 1 Preorders Already Beating MW3‘s

LucasArts Run By “Psychopaths”

Back in the heyday of the 1990s, LucasArts was one of the good guys. Titles like X-Wing, Jedi Knight and Monkey Island were pillars of PC gaming, but then something happened. Star Wars Battlefront, an FPS with third person elements released in 2004, was an extremely successful game for LucasArts and the 2005 sequel performed equally well. But after Jim Ward left the company, the plans for a technically ambitious Battlefront 3 from the British studio Free Radical went sour. Free Radical bosses David Doak and Steve Ellis say every effort was made to sabotage development by the people running LucasArts in 2008. (Link)