The failure of All Points Bulletin is a current hot topic, especially since it looks to have pretty much destroyed the generally well-regarded developer Real Time Worlds. A great look at this toppling can be seen at GameBrief – the only thing that appears wrong are claims that APB only sold around 10k copies, whereas … Continue reading
Filed under Controversy …
Censorship, And What’s Going On Here Guyz?
A Short-ish and Curious Tale So, you’ve got Deadly Premonition, a game with a pretty patchy history – announced under one title, then disappearing for an extended period only to pop up with a new name – that launches to a pretty mixed set of reviews. It’s also a budget game, so the chance of … Continue reading
Blizzard Has Sent You A Friend Request
Blizzard recently implemented its own social network application called RealID, which launched as a totally optional adjunct to World of Warcraft. Two weeks later and the indication is that “totally optional” actually meant “compulsory with the launch of the Cataclysm expansion“. The reaction to this move hasn’t been positive, with a lot of the criticism … Continue reading
APB Learns Something Else From The Movie Industry
In the movie industry, if a studio is releasing a film they know will be savaged on release, it is a common practice to not let movie critics see it before it launches. This maximises the number of people who will see the awful film because they won’t be warned off by bad reports at … Continue reading
Video Game Violence Corrupts Children; or How Night Trap Begat Petz
Gamasutra has a book extract that covers the development of the US games rating system, spurred on by Joseph Lieberman’s hearings and the threat of having a government ban on violent games. Mortal Kombat and Night Trap were two key examples in those hearings and my, don’t they look tame by today’s standards? Funnily enough, … Continue reading
Two Quick Points
Point 1: E3 is soon and Star Wars: The Old Republic is going to receive nothing but good press, probably even a few ‘Game of E3’ or equivalent titles. It’s BioWare, it’s EA, it’s Star Wars, it’s a hugely expensive title and no video game reviewing organisation wants to be left in the cold by … Continue reading
Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals, Sitting In A Tree…
It’s a shade old news now, but I really enjoyed seeing the news that the Neanderthal genome had been (draft) sequenced and that it looks like there really was the divergence of Neanderthal and Homo Sapien genes about 400 000 years ago and potential mixing up to as recently as 30 000 to 80 000 … Continue reading
This Is How You Do Punishment
Since I don’t live in New South Wales or Queensland, I really don’t care about Rugby League. However, when the Melbourne Storm was caught in long-term salary cap violations, League certainly did punishment the right way. The consequence of hiding about AUS$1.7 m in player payments through game day payments of around $15 000 to … Continue reading
One Simple Step To Becoming The Hero of the Revolution
Get your head chopped off. The sudden disappearance of Daeke from the Champions Online forums, followed by the announcement that he’d “moved on to other things” was an interesting set of events. Not because Cryptic saw another Community Manager pass through ChampO – they’ve had Sporkfire, IronAngel, Kestrel, Awen (popped up but mainly Star Trek … Continue reading
Scientific American on Why RMT Is Good For Developing Nations
An interesting article that serves as a decent history lesson as well as a different viewpoint on real money transactions (RMT) in MMOs. If you take the view of the article, it’s interesting to consider that RMT / gold farming can be a positive influence on employment in developing countries since it pays well enough … Continue reading
World Class Villains 