Daily News Spin — August 29, 2001 (Wednesday)

Starsiege site going dark

Sierra's shutting down the Starsiege Player's site as of 4pm PCT on August 30th. Time to grab anything you might need for Starsiege, like editing tools and skins.

This is not a Tribes site. It's the giant robot game. We spotted this on GameSpyDaily.

Desslock on Arcanum

What does the RPG wundermeister say about this RPG of the moment?

I think the graphics are undeniably dated (and drab), but even worse than the graphics are the animations, which are often awkward-looking and occasionally make the game look goofy. There are so many different options to customize in character development that the game offers tremendous replayability, but there also seem to be a lot of "dead end" development choices that make the game much more difficult to play than other choices. There's nothing wrong with having easier and more difficult development paths - obviously it was much more difficult to play through Fallout as a non-violent diplomat than as a sniper, but the different choices were one of the reasons that game was so interesting - but I think there's a number of choices in Arcanum that are so unhelpful that they make the game too difficult to be enjoyable to most players -- and those choices aren't as intuitive as they were in Fallout. Guns are a lot weaker than they were in an earlier build of the game, which I don't think works as well, even though the developers thought the change was necessary for balance reasons. I also think that the sheer number character development of choices creates the illusion that the game has more depth than it actually has - still, the character development system is definitely a strength of the game.

There's more for anyone interested.

Uh-oh

It's not really game related, but the Stileproject site may have gone too far this time. Wired has the news:

A gruesome video on a website that shows a kitten being killed and prepared for a meal is causing outrage on the Internet.

Available on the StileProject.com website, the graphic video shows a conscious kitten being struck on the head twice, decapitated, butchered and cooked.

"It's terrible," said Peter Wood, a spokesman for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). "It's gratuitous violence and cruelty.

" PETA plans to report the video to the Department of Justice. Group officials say they are confident the site will be prosecuted under a new federal law prohibiting depictions of animal cruelty for commercial purposes.

It's really hard to muster up much sympathy for the Stileproject site, since we suspect they really are just trying to turn a buck, despite their protestations that the video was posted as "an educational tool."

Go to college, get a degree in game making

The Art Institute of Los Angeles has announced a new degree program aimed at wannabe computer game makers, according to a wire story on Office.com:

The Art Institute of Los Angeles has received approval to offer a Bachelor of Science degree program in Game Art & Design beginning in October 2001. The program will instruct students on character animation techniques coupled with complex modeling and computer mapping that makes computer game animation come alive with movement, color, and action characters.

There are some scholarships to be had as well:

As part of the new program introduction, the school plans to offer a series of 10 scholarships ranging from $2,000 to $20,000, for the upcoming fall quarter beginning October 1, 2001. The scholarship competition is open to all applicants with a high school diploma and interest in joining the program, and has a deadline for application of September 17, 2001. Information regarding the scholarships may be obtained by calling The Art Institute of Los Angeles.

New EverQuest zone launched

There's a new free zone called the Stonebrunt Mountains.

Located on the small continent of Odus, the Stonebrunt Mountains are rich with vegetation and distinctive hills that give way to the towering Mount Klaw; the largest mountain in Odus and home to the Kerran village of Kejeka. The zone of Stonebrunt is designed to be a mid-level, outdoor zone similar in scope and scale to the Lake of Ill Omen on Kunark

Bastardos! They're trying to pull us back in again. The Lake of Ill Omen is one of our favorite EQ zones.

Blizzard slowly disrobing as our feverish excitement mounts

See what surfing the net looking for free porn does to a writer's imagination? It's a terrible waste. Blizzard is going to announce their new game at ECTS and now they're teasing us with reminders. They should have something up on their website early Sunday morning, PCT, they say.

We firmly pledge that we will not be the first site to break the news. Why not? We're going to be too busy looking for free porn and we're sure to miss it.

The other big ECTS announcement will be Brian Reynolds and Big Huge Games showing their new game for the first time.

Disciples II, O.R.B. delayed

They've slipped until next year, according to Strategy First:

"We feel that with the volume of titles we are publishing this year, we needed to give Disciples II and O.R.B. more marketing attention which meant pushing them to 2002," says Don McFatridge, President of Strategy First. "This allows us the time needed to put the extra polish into our games, ensuring that they are of the highest possible quality."

This means that both games are going to be more than a year late if you go by their original 2000 due dates. This is especially puzzling for Disciples II, which looks very similar to the first game. However, Strategy First has told us in the past that they consider Disciples to be a franchise they can really build around.

Computer game racing wheel used for drug smuggling

This one's kind of funny, from AllAfrica.com.

The police Criminal Investigation Division (CID) in Maseru are hunting for an addressee who would be a recipient of a large package of addictive and illegal drugs intercepted by the diamond and drugs section.

The police said the parcel was labeled as formula charge computer racing wheel. A racing wheel is a device used in computer software for playing games. It is installed in the software for playing various racing games. "But it was discovered that a total of ten thousand and forty five different types of drug tablets were concealed in the computer racing wheel," the CID said last week.

Hmmm...we never checked the insides of our Microsoft wheel. Time to get out the screwdriver!

Games and writers and writers and games

No, we're not referring to Max Payne, even if the sun did rise today like an angry taco over the fiesta brunch of our life. Rather, we have word from Firaxis that they have released Dragon Sun, the second Sid Meier Alpha Centauri novel written by Michael Ely.

Dragon Sun continues the story of the Unity survivors on an alien world. Beneath the surface of the colonized world, a growing rebellion threatens Sheng-ji Yang's dreams of immortality. At the same time, Lady Deirdre Skye's life is in jeopardy as the Planetary Council withholds vital supplies, demanding that she turn over her research concerning the mysterious life force awakening on Chiron. The struggles of these two individuals, and the alliance they seek, creates the central plotline of Dragon Sun.

Meanwhile, author Ray Bradbury grabs his Blade of Curmudgeonry +3 at Salon and takes a swipe at our hobby.

What about video games? If young Ray Bradbury from 1940 were here today, would he play video games where a person can experience a simulation of space travel?

That's male ego crap [pauses to hawk up a big one and spit]. I never cared for pinball games when I was 18 or 19 [slams his cane down]. Video games are a waste of time for men with nothing else to do [gestures at his 27 year old wife waiting to inherit his estate, and grins]. Real brains don't do that [tries to cover up crossword puzzle book on table]. On occasion? Sure. As relaxation? Great. But not full time and a lot of people are doing that [hawks up another one]. And while they're doing that, I'll go ahead and write another novel. Novels about the future, when women will no longer wear any clothes!

What does he mean "male ego crap"? We bet we could whip him in a game of Starcraft! Thanks Jay!

And yeah, we added the parentheticals and maybe some other stuff. We recently upgraded our poetic license and now we're sheriffs of the written word and can do that sort of thing. Honest.

Weird Interplay stuff

This whole Titus takeover thing has been strange. Now Eurogamer is suggesting that Interplay is trying wriggle out of the deal.

...Interplay decided to dump Titus in favour of Vivendi, who will now handle distribution of the firm's games in the USA. The point here is that even when Titus take over Interplay at the AGM next month, they will probably still be forced to honour the Vivendi contract, which will cause a lot of headaches for them. Titus is trying to put a brave face on it though, hence the quotes we reported on yesterday about saving $10m a year by sacking Interplay's marketing and distribution staff and letting Vivendi handle the games.

Obviously not content with this spoiling move, our sources are now reporting that Interplay has filed to say that its shareholders want the company wound up! This could mean that when Titus gets hold of the reins in September the company will already be in Chapter 11 receivership. Somebody at Interplay obviously doesn't like the fox...

We asked someone who understands these kinds of things, and here's the answer we got:

[He thinks]...Titus is in the loop, and that it's just a move to turn Interplay back into a developer, by abandoning the publishing market.

No one can wind up Interplay without Titus's consent -- this article is reporting conflicting things: on the one hand, it's saying Titus isn't in the loop, and yet on the other, it's saying that the shareholders (a majority of which are represented by Titus) are forcing the possible windup of the company. They're inconsistent with each other.

Mod makers are pornographers?

Just when you think the stupidity serum might finally be wearing off, they start mainlining it again. From MSN:

David Walsh, president of National Institute on Media and the Family, a nonpartisan organization that looks at the impact of entertainment on children, contends that underage mod makers are the moral equivalent of teenage pornographers. He thinks the game industry should apply the same rating system used on games to the mods themselves and restrict kids' access to Web sites where mods are posted.

The issue is starting to catch the attention of Congress. "This is a whole new problem," says Dan Gerstein, communications director for Sen. Joseph Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut. Lieberman is the author of a bill that would authorize the Federal Trade Commission to penalize companies that intentionally market adult-rated entertainment directly to children. But the legislation is finely tailored to address deceptive marketing rather than prohibit kids from making mods for mature-rated games, Gerstein says.

Hey, what was that? It's blue and it nearly hit us? It's...it's the sky! It's falling! Thanks Jeff!

3am

The official site for Funcom's Midgard, a massively multiplayer Norse mythology game, has launched.

Mark has a new GameSpin up at GameSpy, this one with some conversation with Scott Miller about the dialog in Max Payne.

As we're sure you know, Microsoft has delayed the launch of the Xbox in Japan and Europe until next year. No big surprise, but the mainstream press is going ga-ga over the news.

Gamedev.net is the latest website to go the donationware model. The web's starting to look like downtown LA with all the panhandlers.

The high tech industry continues to take a pounding with Gateway laying off 5000 and more confirmation that the DRAM market is hurting. "DRAM will shrink 55.5 percent to $14 billion in 2001, compared with $31.5 billion in 2000, marking the industry's worst annual decline on record" says the NY Times. While it's certainly nice to get cheap RAM for our computers, you have to wonder what will happen to the manufacturers in the long run?

According to Ananova, drugs are in the water at the game rooms in Asia.

A Thai newspaper claims amphetamines are being added to drinking water at 24-hour computer game shops to keep people playing for longer.

Pravda calls the Brits dumb! This has nothing to do with anything, but it tickles us. Read the following account of accidents in Britain according to Pravda.

Nearly 6,000 people were hurt after tripping over their trousers or falling down stairs while pulling them up. And 10,773 are hurt each year in accidents involving socks and tights....

Other injuries included: 13,132 people injured after incidents involving boiling vegetables, 1,810 people walking into tree trunks or cutting their hands on them and 1,171 after accidents involving leaves, such as slipping. There also have been incidents involving bird baths accounted for 311 trips to casualty and 3,421 people being injured annually in accidents involving clothes baskets, and many others.

This much is clear: If you're ever in Britain, the last thing you want to be doing is pulling up your trousers near either a tree trunk, a clothes basket, or anyone wearing a tweed hat and holding binoculars who's pretending to be a bird watcher.

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