Daily News Spin — August 27, 2001 (Monday)

Gearbox to take over Counter-Strike: Condition Zero

The announcement was made today that Valve has shifted development of this title to Gearbox. Initially Rogue was the developer but Valve took it in-house. IGN has an interview with Gearbox's Randy Pitchford:

IGNPC: Did you like the direction Rogue Entertainment was taking Counter-Strike: Condition Zero? Did you find you had to "start from scratch" so to speak?

Randy Pitchford: We did start from scratch. I actually have been speaking with Valve about Counter-Strike and things that could be done with it for quite a while. We all knew CS was going to be special. Fortunately, the timing of our human bandwidth usage and our long-term project goals were able to finally synch up with Valve's attentions to CS at this critical time when it really made sense for us to get together to do this thing.

More Counter-Strike madness

First a heart attack, now a knifing. Sheesh. From The Straits Times:

DANIEL Tan Thiam Soon, 21, takes his computer games seriously. Some might say too seriously for comfort.

One night, when his game character was stabbed to death during a computer game, he retaliated by knifing a fellow player who had carried out the virtual reality killing in the back.

And:

In the middle of the game, Tan suddenly yelled out who had 'killed' his computer game character.

When Qiyong confessed it was his game character, Tan hurled vulgarities at him.

He then stormed over to Qiyong's computer terminal and a scuffle ensued.

During the scuffle, Tan pulled out a knife and stabbed the teen in the back.

The kid needed stitches but was otherwise ok. Meanwhile, Tan has been sentenced to six years in jail and six strokes of the cane. We spotted this story first on Eurogamer.

The admonishments begin

Ok, so we have that poor fellow who dies while playing a marathon session of Counter-Strike. Looks like the press is starting to pile on.

Worasit Chaingarm from Games Star magazine told The Nation newspaper Sunday that intense computer games should not be played for long stretches of time by children or the infirm.

"People who play these kinds of games would come under great stress. Since they want to win, they keep on playing for a long time and tire out their body and mind," he said.

Can we just play until we get a mild case of angina?

Oh, and thank you Games Star magazine for your expert medical opinion!

3am

Want to see a game that looks like they reverse-engineered Starcraft? Click here. This same company also has a Counter-Strike knockoff.

Romero and Hall may be making a PocketPC game next, Blue's News is reporting.

Infogrames is predicting that Patrician 2 will have over 2000 hours of gameplay. We'll pass on reviewing that game.

Titus, fresh off assimilating Interplay, has signed a distribution deal with Vivendi for the US market. Vivendi will get the Titus and Interplay titles on the retail shelves in other words.

Gamepen's reporting that Heroes of Might and Magic IV has been delayed until next year.

The BioWare doctors respond to that slew of news stories about games causing faulty mental development.

EA will come out with a localized version of Ultima Online aimed at the Korean market, according to this Yahoo story. The article notes that the game currently has 235,000 subscribers.

Click here to read Saturday's news