Daily News Spin — October 5, 2001 (Friday)

Fifteen year old shows up killologist

The world's leading (and only) killologist, Lt. Col. David Grossman is at it again in an LA Times article about kids and violent games.

There's a generation growing up that the media has cocked and primed for draconian action and a degree of bloodlust that we haven't seen since the Roman children sat in the Colosseum and cheered as the Christians were killed," Grossman says, serious, disgusted.

This is countered by a 15 year old.

Luke Barthez, 15, from Long Beach, uses his vast, inherent knowledge of complex media to counter guys like Grossman. "Only idiots can learn from a video game," he says. "I play soccer, and I only wish I could be as good as the goalie in the [Nintendo 64] game." He gets much of what he knows about war, conflict and mass, nation-sponsored death from the History Channel. It's better than what war looks like on a computer, which, he insists, isn't even close to real. It's "a prefabricated idea of what somebody wants me to think combat is like. It's just what they want me to see war as. It's not real."

It's amazing that a 15 year old can be smarter than a guy with an advanced degree in killology, but there you have it!

Imagine game mags see circ increase

The rest of their publishing empire may be limping, but the game magazines are doing better, at least with circulation according to Freerealtime.

Media's PSM: 100% Independent PS2 & PlayStation Magazine has experienced a 20.6% increase in total qualified paid circulation over the past year (June 2001 ABC FAS-FAX). In addition, Imagine's PC Gamer saw an increase of 4.9% in paid circulation during that time.

And:

PC Gamer has been the leader in PC games magazines circulation since its launch in 1994. In fact, it has seen six rate-base increases since its inception, and a growth of 108% in total paid circulation over the past five years. PC Gamer currently delivers a core market audience of 375,170.

Of course, if they hadn't dumped Coconut Monkey, they'd probably have a circ of over a million.

Nekked chicks sing to hockey players

The Barenaked Ladies single "It's Only Me", will debut in EA Sports' NHL 2002, according to GameSpyDaily.

One thing that's always puzzled us about the Ladies is that they don't sound like they're singing in the nude. Heck, at times they don't even sound like ladies!

Distant Horizons

Artifact Entertainment, which already dumped its CEO and major shareholder, has now reduced its staff by 20%.

Artifact Entertainment has made a reduction of approximately 20% of the staff working on the development of its flagship title, Horizons. In addition key restructuring changes were made to the management team and production staff.

David Allen no longer holds the positions of Chairman and CEO of Artifact Entertainment he remains as a shareholder of the company. The duties that the CEO position previously entailed have been assigned to Artifact’s President James Jones. Mr. Jones has been with Artifact since November of 1999, and has over 10 years experience in technology development management and public company operations."

What does this mean for the incredibly ambitious MMOG Horizons? Don't cancel your EQ account just yet.

Is this good or does it kind of suck?

Simutronics is one of the pioneers of MMOGs, though their games are text-based. We hit their website on a whim and noticed that they have normal accounts and premium accounts. If you're willing to pay $80 a month for a premium account, you get to be part of a smaller community of players and enjoy more GM-driven events. Sounds a bit pricey, but maybe reasonable if there are a lot of GM events.

However, there are other things they're charging for that you might think would normally be included in a game free of charge. For example, if you want a portrait of your character to be visible to other players, they'll charge you $150 to create one. There's no option to create one yourself. You have to pay them to do it.

If you want an in-game wedding, get ready to fork over an undisclosed amount. At least the "...happy couple will be united by the blessings of the gods, and will be able to express their love for one another via more intimate verb messaging in some of the common verbs such as HUG and LEAN."

Mmmm...intimate verb messaging. Do Latin verbs cost extra?

There are also special in-game quests that you can participate in only if you pay for them.

Are your pockets a little lighter after buying your books? Don't worry, we're running a great "Back to School" special! Premium tickets for the November quest dates of Return to Taisidon are now only $69.95 and regular tickets are only $89.95! Sign up today!

Now maybe some of those players who were upset about paying $30 for an EQ expansion pack might be grateful that Simutronics didn't price the expansion. It probably would have been $595!

These monkeys have the stones!

The official announcement is out about Monkeystone Games, the new venture for hand-held gaming from John Romero, Tom Hall, and Stevie Case, among others.

"Monkeystone is dedicated to smaller games and a small staff. That way, the quality can remain super high, and we get to try all sorts of gaming ideas," says Hall.

Trans. After the Ion Storm debacle, we're lucky to still be working in the industry. Thanks Jason!

Also, GameSpy interviews Stevie Case. Turns out she loves Monkeystones, but we already knew that, didn't we?

Square's Hironobu Sakaguchi interviewed...

The man, the myth, and the mustache says the caption beneath his photo in the interview at Gaming Intelligence Agency.

GIA: You have talked previously of merging the character detail possible in movies with the interactivity of games. How close does Final Fantasy X come to doing just that?

HS: With Final Fantasy X, visually it is not quite there. Graphically, there is still the need for the hardware to be able to show that level of detail. As far as the interactivity, the goal from the get-go for FFX was to blur the borders between gameplay and the story. We aimed to make the game feel really seamless, and we feel it has been done extremely well in FFX.

...and Square says sayanora to movies

According to Yahoo, after losing their kimonos with the Final Fantasy flick, they're sticking to games from now on.

``We shall concentrate on video games, which is our core business,'' a spokesman told Daily Variety.

Square is struggling to recoup $137 million in production costs for ``Final Fantasy,'' which was directed by Hironobu Sakaguchi, executive VP of movie production subsidiary Square Pictures. Sakaguchi oversees all film and game production at the company.

The company did not receive any guarantees from Sony Pictures, which distributed the feature internationally.

The picture has taken $30 million in North America, a third of expectations, with similarly feeble results in key foreign territories. Square had pinned great hopes on its home market of Japan, where the film was released Sept. 15. But receipts through Sunday were just $6 million. The film ends its wide release at the end of this week.

The article also mentions that Square will now lose $84 million at the end of their fiscal year instead of making an expected $6 million profit. Yikes! Let's hope that the Yakuza aren't shareholders.

More on Battlecry II, Warlords IV

We had the pleasure of a brief email exchange with SSG's Steve Fawkner. He gave us further information on the Battlecry sequel and a new Warlords game.

Fawkner: Word sure got out fast about Battlecry II ;-) I saw that Quartertothree & Bluesnews had links to it about 30 min's after the site went live (we were trying to coordinate with our publisher's press release, but they seem to have been held up, and we're not sure why...)

Quarter to Three: Who's publishing it?

Fawkner: Ubisoft (via SSI)

Quarter to Three: When do you expect it to be released?

Fawkner: Spring 2002 The game is in beta already - we probably could have had it done for Christmas, but we didn't want to rush it. A demo should be ready around about Christmas time.

Quarter to Three: How long have you been working on it?

Fawkner: Almost a year.

Quarter to Three: What are the big changes from the first game?

Fawkner: The changes that have the biggest impact on the game are:

* Complete new graphics engine (with all sorts of cool effects)
* 3 New sides, 4 new heroes, 4 new classes, 20 new spells + lots of other new stuff
* A totally new style of non-linear dynamic Campaign
* In-game matchmaking service using Ubi.com.

We're hoping to use the Ubi.com servers to keep ladders, rankings, clans and also to store people's online heroes (it should stop cheating). We haven't implemented these storage features yet, so we haven't officially announced them.

Amazingly, the biggest changes to the way we play are in the smallest things... such as being able to set units to auto-spellcast when appropriate. It really cuts down the micromanagement and increases the enjoyment of the game.

I really took to heart your comment on the first game when you said you *couldn't* enjoy it because the graphics were bad. It made me wonder just how many other people either: a) thought the same, or b) found other things to dislike about the game because they thought the graphics were bad.

We hired a new Art Director & Terrain Artist for WBC2 and I hope everybody enjoys their work.

[Fawkner was referring to a review from Mark; Tom loved the game, though he didn't play it when it was first released.]

Quarter to Three: What about a new turn-based Warlords game?

Fawkner: Warlords IV is well underway, though I'm not working on it. Our new art director wasn't happy with the graphics engine, so the decision was made to rewrite it from the ground up. This, along with constant publisher changes (SSI->Mindscape->Gores->GAMEStudios->Ubisoft) has kept the project in a bit of a state of turmoil. Hopefully we'll have something really worthwhile in the end.

Thanks Steve!

Far out war stuff

This is real and not a game, but it's not hard to imagine it being recreated in a game years from now. The International News has a story about how we think we know where bin Laden is holed up and how we're going to get him. We have laser guns apparently!

It's with very hi-tech and not-yet-used-in-real-combat weapons that the US commandos are reported to be inching towards Osama's base in Pamir mountain range. For the first time in real use would perhaps be a newly developed two barrelled rifle. Its lower barrel can fire ammunition of 5.56 mm calibre. The upper barrel of the same gun fires 20 mm shells from a distance of half a mile. It sends shells to explode over the targets before unleashing a rain of death.

The commandos talk to each other in virtual whispers, amplified through satellite enabled voice messaging received through the helmets of the addressed soldiers. They can also communicate with each other through message, written through a wrist mounted keyboard. The troops read these messages on the visor of their helmets.

The soldiers chasing Osama and his followers can also use a specially designed laser. It can pick and destroy an individual in a crowd by unleashing 2 mega watts of energy. Though, some defence experts told The News that before going for the "unavoidable" hand to hand combat, the US troops would certainly want to "smoke Osama and his followers out" of their citadel, with excessive use of GBU 15 system of penetrating bombs.

Get 'em lads! But be careful, too.

3am

Star Wars Starfighter is coming to the PC now as well as the Xbox. Expect the PC version in January.

Interested in beta testing a new MMOG? You can download Black Moon Chronicles. The artwork is designed to make the game look like a comic book, as you can see here. You can download the 360 meg beta here.

Sony's looking to cut costs by farming out some PS2 production to Taiwan, according to Bloomberg. In other PS2 news, the price cut in the UK caused PS2 sales to spike upwards to 50,476 units sold in the most recent week, which is up from under 15,000 units sold the previous week. We spotted these stories at Eurogamer.

Snowball's (IGN) 1 for 6 reverse split isn't working. The new stock has already dropped from $1.20 a share down to $0.90.

Some Swedish women with an anti-porn bent have created fake porn webpages that are designed to trick porn surfers into checking them out, and then urge the surfers to "get some real" out in the real world, according to Wired news.

Since the campaign was launched last Friday, nearly 13,000 ersatz pages have been generated. Birde has gotten her share of fan mail and hate mail.

"A lot of people love it, but a lot of people are like 'stay away from our porn, you crazy bitches,'" she said.

Click here to read yesterday's news