Posts Tagged ‘News’

What we are looking at for the week of August 30, 2010

 Wow doesn’t this sound familiar?

Most anyone who has ever put up a website on the internet will eventually experience the virtual visits from one of the various companies who buy up potentially popular domain names, including iterations of websites that are popular.  The No Prisoners, No Mercy Team (NPNM) actually has several websites – and so we receive occasional emails from virtual squatters hoping to hold a domain name hostage.  Our response, as always, is to suggest they spend their time on more useful pursuits such as experimenting with just how high it is they can go fly a kite. It’s not so bad when the domain ransom only has three digits in it, but sometimes the ransom has a lot higher price tag…

Take-Two Interactive fought the good fight but failed to prevail in a lawsuit against a company that specializes in domain squatting – the practice of buying up and sitting on domains for potentially popular products. A company called NA Media grabbed the domain name in early 2004 after word slipped out that BioShock was in the works at Irrational Games. Unfortunately for Take-Two, the company hadn’t trademarked “BioShock” before NA Media registered “www.bioshock.com”…

 

Take-Two tried to argue that NA Media had a history of squatting on its domains, having once registered taketwointeractive.com (later handed over to Take-Two). NA Media countered that at the time of the

unofficial announcement and the subsequent grab of the domain, Take-Two was not openly associated with BioShock. Bioshock2.com is currently in a similar situation, but Irrational Games has secured

Bioshockinfinite.com for its next game in the series.

 

A rose by any other name

 

Zynga, our favorite game developer that we love to hate,  is finding out that a rose by any other name doesn’t smell as sweet and is definately not better than chocolate…

Zynga is now the target of a trademark suit from mobile game developer Digital Chocolate. The Trip Hawkins-helmed company claims that it owns the exclusive rights to the name Mafia Wars and that it notified Zynga of the infringement last year, after which it was informed by Zynga that it would stop using the name. Zynga, responding to the lawsuit, stated, “We are surprised and disappointed by Digital Chocolate’s lawsuit. The timing of the action appears to be opportunistic, and we plan to defend ourselves vigorously.”

 

We are the Champions (and now you can be too)

Starting tomorrow, September 1 through September 7 you can experience what it is like to climb into a cape and save the world. If you need some incentive you can give No Prisoners, No Mercy Episode 59  a listen where we interview Mr. Shannon Posniewski, Cryptic’s executive producer for Champions Online.

Your fantasy may not be final yet

If your fantasy is to play the Final Fantasy XIV open beta you will have to wait just a bit more as it has been delayed with an announcement of a schedule made at a later date. While I have played some of the early Final Fantasy console games I hadn’t planned on taking part in the open beta.  However, this all reminded me of some of the articles I have seen around the internet talking about the FFXIV fatigue system, with the most interesting article on the subject over being Déjà vu? I think I have that in the kitchen [] over at Biobreak (one of our favorite sites)  – here’s an excerpt:

“The proposed “fatigue” system in FF14 has stirred up a lot of controversy this past week.  Basically, if you play a character for more than eight hours a week (not a day, a week), then you start to get less and less experience as you go along until you’re finally getting nothing at all.  This system resets after the full week’s gone by.” – Syp from Biobreak

Syp points out, it sounds a bit like hoopla raised ever WoW’s “rested experience” system – which is true until you get to the worlds “Until you are finally getting nothing at all.” It’s at that point where FFXIV can reach the point where you are paying not to play (well sort of). The Pink Pigtail Inn took a look at the issue from the standpoint of parental controls:

“It will even out the conditions that different players have, making it easier for players with a casual schedule to keep up with players who have a lot of time at hands. And it might also, according to some, help to prevent unhealthy addiction, which ever so often is brought up as an argument against gaming… I will take sides though. I just don’t like it when you build in parental controls to a game that is intended for an adult audience. We should be able to decide for ourselves how much time we want to dedicate to a game and where in the week we want to put it.” – Larisa at the Pink Pigtail Inn

Banned in Boston

 

On past shows we briefly mentioned the current reaction to Medal of Honor and the fact that players can play members of the Taliban.  Britain’s defense secretary, Liam Fox has called for a ban of the game in the United Kingdom:

 

“At the hands of the Taliban, children have lost fathers and wives have lost husbands. I am disgusted and angry. It’s hard to believe any citizen of our country would wish to buy such a thoroughly un-British game. I would urge retailers to show their support for our armed forces and ban this tasteless product.” – Liam Fox, Defense Secretary for the United Kingon 

 

Now Wayne Mapp, the Minister of Research for New Zeeland has followed suit:

“Terrorist acts have caused the deaths of several New Zealanders.” He continued, “This game undermines the values of our nation, and the dedicated service of our men and women in uniform.” – Wayne Mapp, via Gamepolitics.com

 

EA having previously defended Medal of Honor saying “If someone’s the cop someones gotta be the robber” has taken a different stance on the issue:

“We respect the media’s views, but at the same time [these reports] don’t compromise our creative vision and what we want to do. The development teams care very much about what they’re building, and of course a bit of criticism from the media causes some to get demoralized, but at the end of the day we’re proud of what we’re doing. Bringing Medal of Honor back was no small feat.” – EA Games President Frank Gibeau

Ironically the best way to assure the success of a book, movie or game is get it banned somewhere.  If you remember back when Martin Scorsese released a film entitled “The Last Temptation of Christ” in 1998.  It was a mediocre film at best and would have faded into the obscurity it so richly deserved it if weren’t for the fact that it was banned, condemned and protested.  The fact that Roger Ebert gave the film with some of the worst acting I have seen outside a high school auditorium four out of four stars only goes to prove my old prof’s point that art was done for the consumer and not for the critic.

 

Don’t play our games

 

Playdom, the company for which Disney recently agreed to shell out over three quarters of of a billion dollars has recently shut down all Acclaim Games. “We regret to inform you that all Acclaim games will no longer be in service effective August 26, 2010” with a note at the bottom to check out Playdom’s Facebook games.

What’s in a name?

 

So goes the question asked by the immortal bard. However, the answer is different if you are a game publisher attempting to use the word “Edge”…

 

“The flurry of actions between Edge Games, its CEO Tim Langdell and Electronic Arts continues with a new entry in the pair’s battle—EA has filed a countersuit against an action brought by Edge earlier this year, which involved the game Mirror’s Edge.  In June, Edge filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against EA, alleging “willful infringement and unfair competition” over the use of the Mirror’s Edge name…Now, according to Industry Gamers, EA’s countersuit claims that the company is “the latest target of Tim Langdell’s decades-long campaign to block anyone from using the word ‘edge,’ or any variation thereof, in connection with the marketing and sales of video games and related products or services.”

“The counter claim calls Langdell a “a one-time designer of video games for such long-since obsolete video game systems as the Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, Commodore 64, Oric, and Sinclair ZX Spectrum,”  and alleged that the company obtained trademarks through “fraudulent misrepresentations to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (‘USPTO’).”

 

Why does this sound familiar? Oh yes, just before the release of the Marx Brothers Movie “A Night in Casablanca” it was rumored (a rumor reportedly started by Groucho Marx himself) that Warner Brothers was trying to get Grouch to not use “Casablana” in the title of his movie.  In “response” he penned the following open letter  to warner Brothers.  On a related subject, since our two co-hosts are sisters we are claiming exclusive rights to the words “sister” as well as “if”, “and”,” but”, as well as “or”

Dear Warner Brothers,

Apparently there is more than one way of conquering a city and holding it as your own. For example, up to the time that we contemplated making this picture, I had no idea that the city of Casablanca belonged exclusively to Warner Brothers. However, it was only a few days after our announcement appeared that we received your long, ominous legal document warning us not to use the name Casablanca.

It seems that in 1471, Ferdinand Balboa Warner, your great-great-grandfather, while looking for a shortcut to the city of Burbank, had stumbled on the shores of Africa and, raising his alpenstock (which he later turned in for a hundred shares of common), named it Casablanca.

I just don’t understand your attitude. Even if you plan on releasing your picture, I am sure that the average movie fan could learn in time to distinguish between Ingrid Bergman and Harpo. I don’t know whether I could, but I certainly would like to try.

You claim that you own Casablanca and that no one else can use that name without permission. What about “Warner Brothers”? Do you own that too? You probably have the right to use the name Warner, but what about the name Brothers? Professionally, we were brothers long before you were. We were touring the sticks as the Marx Brothers when Vitaphone was still a gleam in the inventor’s eye, and even before there had been other brothers—the Smith Brothers; the Brothers Karamazov; Dan Brothers, an outfielder with Detroit; and “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” (This was originally “Brothers, Can You Spare a Dime?” but this was spreading a dime pretty thin, so they threw out one brother, gave all the money to the other one, and whittled it down to “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?”)

Now Jack, how about you? Do you maintain that yours is an original name? Well it’s not. It was used long before you were born. Offhand, I can think of two Jacks—Jack of “Jack and the Beanstalk,” and Jack the Ripper, who cut quite a figure in his day.

As for you, Harry, you probably sign your checks sure in the belief that you are the first Harry of all time and that all other Harrys are impostors. I can think of two Harrys that preceded you. There was Lighthouse Harry of Revolutionary fame and a Harry Appelbaum who lived on the corner of 93rd Street and Lexington Avenue. Unfortunately, Appelbaum wasn’t too well-known. The last I heard of him, he was selling neckties at Weber and Heilbroner.

Now about the Burbank studio. I believe this is what you brothers call your place. Old man Burbank is gone. Perhaps you remember him. He was a great man in a garden. His wife often said Luther had ten green thumbs. What a witty woman she must have been! Burbank was the wizard who crossed all those fruits and vegetables until he had the poor plants in such confused and jittery condition that they could never decide whether to enter the dining room on the meat platter or the dessert dish.

This is pure conjecture, of course, but who knows—perhaps Burbank’s survivors aren’t too happy with the fact that a plant that grinds out pictures on a quota settled in their town, appropriated Burbank’s name and uses it as a front for their films. It is even possible that the Burbank family is prouder of the potato produced by the old man than they are of the fact that your studio emerged “Casablanca” or even “Gold Diggers of 1931.”

This all seems to add up to a pretty bitter tirade, but I assure you it’s not meant to. I love Warners. Some of my best friends are Warner Brothers. It is even possible that I am doing you an injustice and that you, yourselves, know nothing about this dog-in-the-Wanger attitude. It wouldn’t surprise me at all to discover that the heads of your legal department are unaware of this absurd dispute, for I am acquainted with many of them and they are fine fellows with curly black hair, double-breasted suits and a love of their fellow man that out-Saroyans Saroyan.

I have a hunch that his attempt to prevent us from using the title is the brainchild of some ferret-faced shyster, serving a brief apprenticeship in your legal department. I know the type well—hot out of law school, hungry for success, and too ambitious to follow the natural laws of promotion. This bar sinister probably needled your attorneys, most of whom are fine fellows with curly black hair, double-breasted suits, etc., into attempting to enjoin us. Well, he won’t get away with it! We’ll fight him to the highest court! No pasty-faced legal adventurer is going to cause bad blood between the Warners and the Marxes. We are all brothers under the skin, and we’ll remain friends till the last reel of “A Night in Casablanca” goes tumbling over the spool.

Sincerely,

Groucho Marx

 

The Devil didn’t make him do it

Craig Smallwood, of Hawaii isn’t claiming the devil made him do it; he is saying NCSoft made him do it. Do you take the case seriously? Apparently a Federal judge takes it seriously enough to refuse to dismiss the case.

 “Craig Smallwood of Hawaii has a lawsuit in the works against the creator of Lineage II, claiming that he became so addicted to the game he became “unable to function independently in usual daily activities such as getting up, getting dressed, bathing or communicating with family and friends… in his proceedings, [he] claims to have spent 20,000 hours playing the game between 2004 and 2009. He claimed that developer NCsoft is negligent because it failed “to warn or instruct or adequately warn or instruct plaintiff and other players of Lineage II of its dangerous and defective characteristics.”

 

Turning right instead of left

 

 The blogosphere is busily announcing where Realtime Worlds zigged when it should have zagged with the release of their game All Points Bulletin.   Interestingly enough, most of the people who have analyzed the game weren’t the people playing or developing the game.  But if you really want to know where it turned right instead of left check this out…

 

“Those who have been paying attention to the trials and travails of Realtime Worlds and All Points Bulletin may be interested in attending GDC Online (Oct. 5-8, 2010 at the Austin Convention Center in Austin, Texas.) to take in the talk “Self-Inflicted Wounds: When We Are Our Own Worst Enemy.”

Former Realtime Worlds executive producer Joshua Howard (APB) will talk about “common management and organizational failures that leaders talk themselves into accepting, which almost always end up impacting a game’s success.” Howard, who is also a former Carbonated Games executive, will offer techniques everyone can use if they find themselves on a project making similar mistakes.

 

If, however, you can’t afford the Game Developers Conference Online here is another source of inside information – APB Insider Details Realtime Worlds Woes  The main problem being, of course, that this source is simply dubbed “Anonymous” in the original story.

A rather salacious “inside the sausage factory” news article at NowGamer, citing a source close to Real Time Worlds, paints a picture of the company now in bankruptcy in an extremely bad light. We contacted Real Time Worlds to get its side of the story, but they did not respond at the time of this writing. The NowGamer news story taps an anonymous contractor who claims to have worked on “various aspects of APB’s launch” with Real Time Worlds. The anonymous source claims that Real Time Worlds was losing millions of dollars a month, and that the amount of lies it told publishing partner EA was “unbelievable.”

“Coupled with a nasty double cross of EA – waiting until last minute to take back online publishing rights – right before launch and a confused marketing campaign meant no one other than hardcore gamers knew the game had launched. Include some internal politics – mainly from the senior producers and art department – leading to stale advertising material and negative beta campaign the game never really had a chance.”

Via gamepolitics.com

 

A nightmare in Chile

 

I have nightmares about this sort of thing.  I can’t imagine what the miners are going through (O.K. I can but my mind reels just thinking about it) This first came to our attention in the Sunday paper:

 

To give them hope, or to at least keep them occupied as they wait to be dug out, trapped miners in Chile have been given PlayStation Portables, according to MSN International. Copiapó, Chile – a provincial capital situated on the west coast of South America’s Andes Mountain range – has been the focus of the international media as the story of miners wait for a rescue which some say could be two to three months away.

The trapped miners include 1 Bolivian and 32 Chileans, who are getting along well despite their current situation, are doing their best to keep hope alive as rescue crews lower food and supplies via bore holes that are described as “roughly the width of a grapefruit.”

The PSPs were given to “help preserve their mental health” during the long wait for a rescue tunnel to be drilled and to give them a means to escape their current plight. The PSPs were delivered via the small cups that are used to shuttle supplies to the men down the mine shaft. A power supply was also lowered down to the men because the average battery life of a PSP is a mere 6 hours.

Via  Gamepolitics.com

Stranger than Fiction

 

It was not that long ago we read about the following “game” and one young man who wanted to marry his virtual sweetie. Not it appears there is a place to take your virtual sweety on a honeymoon.

 

“Fans of LovePlus, the Konami-developed dating simulator that was released only in Japan, now have a vacation destination where they can integrate virtual girlfriends into their daily activities.

Using augmented reality (AR), Konami and the resort town of Atami, Japan have teamed up to offer 13 “romantic locations” throughout the town, where love struck gamers can pose, thanks to augmented reality, with images of their favorite LovePlus characters…

A local hotel offers additional entertainment for LovePlus fans:

The local Ohnoya hotel even offers traditional rooms to the unusual couples, which feature two sets of futon beds and another barcode panel that allows the men to visualise their girlfriends in a flattering summer kimono.

It was claimed that 200 LovePlus fans have already stayed at the hotel, while “well over 2,000” have visited Atami for the promotion, which ends when this month does.

Schwartzenegger vs. The World (O.K. the videogame world)

 

We aren’t baffled by the support of the videogame industry by the Utah Attorney General’s Office.  What has us baffled is why Governor Schwartzenegger is against violence in videogames but is, apparently o.k. with violence in movies, as evidenced in his appearance in the recently released movie The Expendables where the governator has a walk on roll.

But how does it play AOC?

 

The following website comes to us via Slashdot. It seems that Chris Fenton built his own 1/10 scale Cray – 1A super computer.  While we were all pondering why it suddenly dawned on us to wonder how well it would play Age of Conan…that “high end” game that none of our computers have ever been able to run without looking like it was sputtering to a stop.

 

 

What kind of leaks?

 

NPNM Comment: O.K. we aren’t geeks (at least we don’t think we are but after watching the first two seasons of Big Bang Theory we aren’t too sure any more).  If you have been lending even a modicum of interest to the web site called WikiLeaks  that has incurred the wrath of the United States Military you may have caught site of the latest news on where their servers will be located – 98 feet underground.  All we can say at this point is that it looks like something right out of a Science Fiction movie.

 

Photo Credit: Gizmodo.com

“This is Pionen White Mountains, the nuclear bunker in which Wikileaks will locate some of its servers. It was excavated 98 feet underground, in a rock hill in the center of Stockholm, Sweden, during the Cold War. Originally, it was just a bomb shelter built in 1943. In the 70s, the Swedes turned the shelter into a full bunker, a civil defense center that was going to hold an emergency unit of the Swedish government in the case of a nuclear war.” – Gizmodo.com

 

Are social games the waves of the future?  Richard Garriott thinks so  …

“So, I believe the casual gamer and the social gaming platform represent the largest ever yet seen emergence or change within the gaming industry. And all of us in the development community have a choice to either participate and lead in this journey or get left behind.” – Richard Garriott  

 

Brad McQuaid thinks so…

“I am pleased to announce that I am a co-founder of a new company based here in the San Diego area.  We’re starting small and growing as needed.  Our focus is going to be on bringing some sophistication to casual/social gaming.” – Brad McQuaid

Steve Jobs seems to disagree.  Between the IPAD and the Iphone, Apple has thrown it’s had in the mobile applications ring:

“The transformation of the PC to new form factors like the tablet is going to make some people uneasy because the PC has taken us a long ways,” – Steve Jobs

 

By some accounts the social gaming ship has already sailed.  However, Playdom  is still busy buying up facebook game developers  to the tune of millions of dollars.  On the one hand saying social gaming is losing millions of players when the number of players could already fill a largish country doesn’t amount to much – but nothing says all those customers are paying customers.

As for the No Prisoners, No Mercy team we tend to believe that the man behind the apple, Stephen Jobs is the most likely to have things sussed. Still the FCC and broadband providers are still busy providing the fly for Mr. Jobs ointment.   While the people who busy themselves about the business of trying to afford broad band at least one politician, republican representative John Shimkus, is busy pointing the finger in the opposite direction.

Here is an excerpt from this morning’s Tech report by way of Politico.com:

Over the weekend, Republican Rep. John Shimkus slammed Google as the culprit behind the FCC’s new, forceful push for explicit authority over broadband providers. “This is a political debate by major interests on the West Coast that have helped support the Democratic Party, so that’s why they’ve supported this agenda,” Shimkus told C-SPAN’s “The Communicators.” When pressed then to reveal who those “interests” were, he said: “You know who they are. Our friends at Google are one of the major focuses; they have their interests. … They have supporters and allies, and that’s what this is about.”

 

Our first thought is to give Google a thunderous round of applause and a virtual standing ovation.  The wee problem is that, as well all know, give a politician an inch and he will take a parsec.   The opposite end of that particular pendulum is the Internet kill switch that messers Lieberman-Collins-Carper want to place in the hands of the Feds – that same bill that has just cleared the Senate Committee on Homeland Insecurity and Government Affairs.

If mobile applications are the future, the President Obama is busy doing his part –

This morning the president signed a memorandum that would mandate Federal agencies find ways to free up 500 megahertz of airwaves for consumer mobile broadband services over the next 10 years. President Obama said in a statement that “few technological developments hold as much potential to enhance America’s economic competitiveness, create jobs, and improve the quality of our lives as wireless high-speed access to the Internet.” (source).

In a speech Larry Summers (Director of the White House’s  National Economic Council) likens the move to the opening of the land grant colleges and the transcontinental railways (source )

The big question on our minds is, after the FCC is done with wheeling and dealing with broadband providers will we all get railroaded.

for you baby I would, swim the sea
nothin’ I’d do for you that’s too tough for me
I’d put out a burnin’ building with a, shovel and dirt
and not even worry about, getting hurt
ain’t that tuff enough?
 

 -From Tough Enough by Johnny Clegg

Welcome to the “Tough Enough” edition.

 

Tough Women

 

Let’s start with five tough women (pictured above). The first is, of course, Signourney Weaver (top left)  as Ellen Ripley from Aliens in one of our  favorite moments from the movie – where Ripley confronts the Alien Queen in a mechanical loader and screams the famous line “Get away from her you bitch.”  The second woman is Jenette Goldstein (top row, 2^nd from the right) in another of our favorite roles, from the same movie as well, portraying Pvt. Vasquez.  Private Vasquez is the tougher than nails marine that seems to be the first in a type of role that gets repeated in later movies. Top right is actress Linda Hamilton from the Terminator movies as Sarah Connor.  She is depicted in the movie Terminator 2: Judgment Day where the character first becomes the sort of character you want on your side in a fire fight in the middle of a jungle…an urban jungle.  The next (bottom left) is from the recent James Cameron movie Avatar.  While Signourney Weaver’s cigarette toking Dr. Grace Augustine is fairly tough, as often happens it is the character actors that shine the brightest in their roles. (More on that later).  The character in this case is, of course, Pilot Trudy Chacon as portrayed by Michelle Rodriguez. And yes, we noticed the similarities between the Trudy Chacon and the Pvt. Vasquez characters, but since both Aliens and Avatar are James Cameron films it seems reasonable that the movie maker borrow from himself, eh? Still, we would have liked to see actress Jenette Goldstein in the role of Trudy Chacon, but Ms. Rodriguez did a marvelous job as well.  You might want to also add actress Jessica Biel in the list above as Charisa Sosa (not pictured) from the newly released “A-Team” movie (but more on that later)

The toughest woman above is not an actress at all…and anybody who us knows that we will naturally include her in any list of tough women.  In fact I am told Julie and Fran quote her each night before they go to bed.  This woman may not look tough but she is – tough as titanium. We can list her meager possessions here:

3 dresses

1 sweater

1 pair of sandals

Underwear made from flour sacks.

1 plate

1 spoon

1 book

1 crucifix

1 rosary

And of course one canvas bag to put it in.

That’s it. That’s all this woman owned, period. 

Actress Signourney Weaver tells a story of the time she attended the academy awards and she heard a young actress from one side say, “ look at her that must have taken a lot of surgery”. To which Ms. Weaver replied “I worked for this body.”  As much as each actress worked out to get the well chiseled look, few people are tough enough to live in such poverty by choice as the woman on the bottom right, and do so while spending a large part of her life caring for the sick in a leper colony.  And THAT my friends is ONE TOUGH mama Jama. This is the same woman to whom President Ronald Regan once presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom, of which he said that she was the only recipient likely to melt the medal down, sell it, and use it to feed others.  She is, of course, the toughest of the tough. She is Mother Teresa.

 

The Tough Team

by Julie Whitefeather

 As I see it, in every article for this website, somewhere there has to be a tie in with the video game industry – so here it is.  The tough team in this case is the A-Team.  Anyone who has ever played World of Warcraft (WoW) has seen the Mr.-T commercial he did for WoW (remember the phrase “night elf Mohawk”?). If not you can see it here. For those of you too young to remember, Mr. T was in the original televised series of the same name.  In the recently released movie version the role of B.A. Baracus was portrayed by Quinton “Rampage” Jackson (WWF Raw). There may even be some of you who rarely see movies yet still recognize the voice of the leader of the A-Team, Liam Neeson as Colonel John “Hanibal” Smith (The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, Batman Begins).  Those of you who say to yourselves “That voice sounds familiar” will remember the same voice actor portraying your father in Fallout 3.

So there’s the videogame tie-in.

Members of the 2010 A-team are also portrayed by Bradley Cooper (“Alias” –Will Tippin) as Lt. Templeton “Face” Peck and Sharlto Copley (District 9, Wikus Van De Merwe) as Murdock.  Another familiar face (and especially voice) is Gerald McRaney (Major Dad, Simon and Simon) as General Morrison. And of course the runner up to the “tough women” list above Jessica Biel (Abigail Whistler, Blade: Trinity) as Cpt. Charisa Sosa.

In a recent review that proves the point of one of my fine arts professors (oft discussed before in these pages and on our show) Roger Ebert proves the prof’s point that the arts (yes even movies) where done for the common person and not the reviewer. His lead in paragraph is as follows:

“‘The A-Team’” is an incomprehensible mess with the 1980s TV show embedded inside. The characters have the same names, they play the same types, they have the same traits, and they’re easily as shallow. That was OK for a TV sitcom, which is what the show really was, but at over two hours of Queasy-Cam anarchy, it’s punishment.” – Roger Ebert,

 

The obvious question is to wonder if Roger’s delineation of the movie as “an incomprehensible mess” is more due to a lack of powers of comprehension on the reviewer’s part than the movie’s script.  In a manner that I am sure must be totally uncharacteristic, and belying what must certainly be his astounding powers of observation, he points out to us that the characters all have the same names. Amazing that isn’t it?  By the end of the first paragraph we find ourselves forced to resort to utter shock by Mr. Ebert’s further powers of analysis by revealing the fact that, yes, the characters were shallow.

As amazing as Mr. Ebert’s powers of analysis are, might I respectfully (ok perhaps not too respectfully) suggest that if he wants good drama and in depth characters that he go rent an Ingmar Berman film, and perhaps go back to typing reviews on a manual type writer.

Amazing as it is, some films are done simply for the fun of it as, spell it with me Roger…E-N-T-E-R-T-A-I-N-M-E-N-T.

Part of what Ebert has a hard time with is the lack of fluidity where the film inter-cuts between scenes – this is more along the lines of “you be the judge”; I had no problem with it, nor did my companion nor anyone else in the theater. I think Roger is the lone wolf on this one.  Effective or not, it is simply a technique used to tie together parts of the script. Roger goes on to complain about the physics in the movie, ‘Bored out of my mind during this spectacle, I found my attention wandering to the subject of physics’, bad guys who monologue too long and hero’s who always seem to know what the bad guy is going to do.

In the end it’s a good thing that Hollywood directors don’t follow Roger’s movie making advice, otherwise I would never have been able to enjoy horrible movies like the “Die Hard” series and any of the James Bond films.

Toward the end of the review Ebert pens the words “I don’t want to be tiresome, but…” to which I can only reply.

Too late, Roger – Much too late.

At this point I will risk adding the advice, next time grab some popcorn and at least try and enjoy the movie.

Tough Enough to Try Again

 

Another question that rises to mind was triggered by the news that Brad McQuaid is going to try and build another company.  Those of you who are not new to gaming will remember the names Sigil Games and Vanguard – both classic examples of how not to develop a game, not to mention never have the chutzpa to call your game a “WoW killer.” If not you can go back to articles of yester year and read  Brad McQuaid and  Chutzpa and Sigil: The Flipside . The new company he will be starting will be concentrating on “sophisticated casual and social games”, with no further explanation on exactly what that entails. You can read the advert on his blog site here.  The question remains, however, (aside from exactly what he means by “casual and social”) is whether or not he will still garner the trust of the industry.  After all, as the old adage goes, we learn from our mistakes, and  Mr. McQuaid has said repeatedly in his blog that he has learned from his.  Certainly the shadow of his former employees, who were told to gather everything they needed for the rest of the day and meet in the company parking lot, and then summarily dismissed, will still loom large.  Does he deserve a second chance? We think so and even if he isn’t good at business he is good at making games.

Tough enough for a tough market

 

Onlive-The first question anyone should ask who is considering going into any sort of business is what they can bring to the table that someone else hasn’t already.  One of those who has brought something new to the table is Onlive.   They hope to be the answer to those developers/publishers who come out with a game that few computers will run, then simply shrug their shoulders and say “well it’s a high end game.”  The solution, of course, is a streaming game, like a remote terminal.  It sounds like a great idea, dependant on whether or not the ping rate to their servers will move faster than an arthritic pigeon.  Even if that is the case, and it could well be, the question then becomes one of pricing.  Would you pay $14.95 per month to play single player games?  Our news feed tells us they will offer games “including Mass Effect 2, Assassin’s Creed II, Borderlands, Dragon Age Origins, Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, and Metro 2033.” You can read more here .

Connect with Kinect- How much would you pay to play a game without a controller? Certainly it is an amazing concept, as our regular guest Saylah says it is “full of win”.  The idea of playing an MMO with Kinect certainly excite the imagination, but the real issue is pricing – or so say a couple of the articles that recently crossed our news desk.  The first tells us that, “Microsoft’s Kinect motion camera is that the platform holder is still struggling with some aspects of its launch strategy for the device.”. The second source tells us that it is a done deal:

“Well, none of this will come as a big surprise here, but it’s always nice to hear it straight from an official source. Microsoft has confirmed that a $199 version of new Xbox 360 will be coming in the fall to replace the now-$149 Arcade, which is no longer in production. In addition, the company’s also spilled a few more beans — Kinect will be available as a bundle with the new Xbox 360, and though there isn’t any official pricing information on that one just yet, we’ve seen some telltale evidence on that front which would lead us to believe it’ll run somewhere in the neighborhood of $399 for an Elite and $299 for the Arcade. So now you know.” – Kotaku.com

 

Warner Brothers –  At any time in the last week or so, if you were playing word association and I gave you the name “Turbine” odds are that you would follow up with “Warner Brothers”  (Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment), the company that bought the developer of Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons and Dragons Online not that long ago. The subsidiary of media giant Time/Warner now owns Monolith, TT Games, NetherRealm Studios, Turbine Inc. and is reported to have an interest in RockSteady (developer of Batman: Arkham Asylum). Recently Samantha Ryan, senior VP of production and development told Gamasutra    the following:

“But after the rapid expansion it’s time to focus on internal depth and growth, not more acquisitions. We’re actually I think going to go through kind of a settling period for a little while,” she said, “where we’re going to focus on getting all the stuff that we’ve just acquired well-integrated, and really focus on the games.” – Samantha Ryan, senior VP of production, Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment

 

That sound you hear in the background is the No Prisoners, No Mercy team applauding.  Good news for Turbine, and sound advice that Starbucks should have taken.

Tough Enough to Survive

 

There are many things the No Prisoners, No Mercy team have in common and one of them is an Alma Mater – University of Illinois.  The University is taking the time to preserve video games that go back over the last four decades including “a 1993 version of Doom, various editions of Warcraft, and even MIT’s Spacewar! circa 1962.”  When Jerome McDonough, Assistant Professor of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois spoke to Arstechnica to answer the  obvious question “Why” he responded as follows:

The really simple, one-sentence answer is because games are important. In the United States we’re looking at about 80,000 people who are directly employed by the gaming industry and maybe another 240,000 people involved in related, tangential industries that rely on gaming companies for their existence….In the United States, we have two thirds of American households as active gamers….You also can’t understand some other parts of our cultural world unless you preserve some of the game world.” – Jerome McDonough, Assistant Professor of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois

You can read the entire interview here.

Last and least

 

Last and certainly least has got to be one of the dumbest ideas to come across our news desk in a long time. It seems that the California Legislature is considering license plates that turn into small electronic bill boards when the car to which they are attached stops for more than four seconds.  Here is a quote:

“The bill’s author, Democratic Sen. Curren Price of Los Angeles, said California would be the first state to implement such technology if the state Department of Motor Vehicles ultimately recommends the widespread use of the plates. He said other states are exploring something similar.” -  source

Now granted the news does come to us via Slashdot, still it makes us pause to wonder if the good Senator mentioned above has a keeper somewhere that isn’t watching him carefully. Living in Illinois we do, of course, understand when states have difficulties. After all, we live in a state where our governors seem to end up in prison.

The picture is our way of saying somebody missed the target.  In this case, we aren’t the ones who are claiming someone missed the target, but Games Politic’s own James Fudge is:

“A report from Inside Social Games shows that Facebook games saw big drops in monthly active users (MAU’s) in the month of April. According to the monthly report 18 of the top 25 Facebook games saw a decline in visitors for the month.” – Game Politics

Accessible games, as Mr. Scott Hartsman called them on our podcast, are a subject that we have discussed often as of late.  Zynga, being the new (albeit beleaguered) 800 pound Facebook Games gorilla on the block, has seen many developers vying for a piece of their action. But a quick look at the article cited above makes it seem as if Johnny-come-lately developers are indeed a day late and a dollar short.  This includes Richard Garriott who’s Portalarium company has released yet another poker game.

Mending the Net

One of the subjects we discussed at length in the top half of show 58 is net neutrality and the failed attempt by the FCC to rein in Comcast. Comcast, you may remember, has been attempting to join internet providers in other countries by finding a way to make their subscribers pay until they bleed if they go over a set download limit on their internet service (a limit they set).  It appears that our Uncle Sam is not one to give up quite that easy and has taken a novel approach one might call everything old is new again:

“The Wall Street Journal reports that the Federal Communication Commission plans to try regulating the Internet again using older rules that were written for phone networks to stop broadband service providers from blocking access to different types of data. But the real reason to use older language is probably to avoid another rebuke in the courts when service providers try to challenge the new regulations”. – Wall Street Journal via Game Politics

A Pirates Life (not) for me

A side effect of those who do find the pirates life is for them (at least video game pirates) are the many developers like Ubisoft who are busily throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Why?  If you haven’t heard, one of the latest trends for single player PC games is to require the user to be constantly connected to the internet; and without the connection the game becomes unplayable. But are the developers and publishers right to use such draconic digital rights management?  The head programer at Wolfire games doesn’t think so. What is more, Wolfire is putting their money where their mouth is. They are hosting something called “A Humble Bundle”  -  “a sale of five independent games that work on the PC, Mac OS X, and Linux. No DRM, so you can install each game on all your systems. You pay what you like, and you can split the payment between the developers and two charities.”

Sound as if they won’t make a nickel? If that’s what you think you would be wrong.  Read the article over at Arstechnica, where Wolfire’s head programer gives his opinion on just why a few fingers are pointing back at developers when one points at video game pirates:

“David gives a simple reason for the problems in PC gaming: developers do it poorly. “It’s easier for these developers to point their fingers at pirates than to face the real problem: that their games are not fun on [the] PC… they are not fun to play with a mouse and keyboard, and don’t work well on PC hardware. Their field of view is designed to be viewed from a distant couch instead of a nearby monitor, and their gameplay is simplified to compensate for this tunnel vision.” – Arstechnica.com

 

Passing on the award

Recently we cited some serious contenders for the Darwin Award.  One of the most serious contenders was Activision for busying themselves about killing Infinity Ward, the proverbial goose that laid the golden egg.   Contender or not, Activision can pass on the award (albeit on a far smaller scale) to a student at New York City’s Pensacola High School who used a Nintendo Game Boy to create a fake bomb and planted it in his school:

“With all the reports of terrorism in New York City this week, it is probably not a good idea to place something that looks like a bomb in a school, but that’s just what 18-year-old Pensacola High School student Lars O’Mara did. His motive? To gain popularity by getting fellow students out of class for the day. But instead of a trip to the mall this student is spending some leisure time at the local jail and facing a felony charge.” – Game Politics.com