Daily News Spin — August 9, 2001 (Thursday)

Suicide's not a good Final Fantasy

Voodoo Extreme spotted a story on Pravda that claims that Final Fantasy is responsible for the suicide deaths of six Russian teens.

6 teenagers committed suicide over the recent 4 months in the town of Kstovo which is not far from the city of Nizhni Novgorod. The first 3 guys hung themselves and the rest of them jumped off the roofs of high buildings.

One of the versions of the investigation was about their fatal passion for a video game �The Final Fantasy� the plot of which is connected with magic. Law-enforcement officers tend to give consideration to everything including the most incredible versions � from destructive influence of the game on psychology as it is to the fact that there was some code signal recorded on the CD game - the signal which made the guys kill themselves.

The article also mentions that last week the Russians have officially added computer games to school curriculums.

There is another alerting thing. An epoch-making event took place in Russia last week which was not noticed for some reason. Computer games were given the sports status. Moreover, the Ministry for Education included computer games in school education program. Computer games will be studied at physical training classes.

Sounds healthy!

Sierra getting whacked, Dynamix gone?

More rumor mill stuff. Fuckedcompany is reporting that Sierra will lay off 300 on Monday. Blue's is also reporting that Dynamix, a Sierra division, has been shut down. This latter bit of information comes from a message board post by a former Dynamix employee.

Pretty shocking news. We have no idea how the Sierra layoffs will affect their games. They outsource a lot of development now anyway. Still, Half-Life 2 has never been officially announced, so we wonder if Sierra is even going to publish it?

Thanks Denny!

Games as art, part the seventh

We just can't get away from this stuff. It's creeping us out! The NY Times has the story.

"More and more artists are becoming aware of the tools available to them offered by game software," said Anne-Marie Schleiner, who teaches digital art and was the curator of the online exhibition "Cracking the Maze: Game Plug-Ins and Patches as Hacker Art" in 1999. "A younger generation of artists are coming of age who have always played games and reject the barrier imposed between fine art and games."

Museums, for their part, see video games as a medium that encourages visitors to interact with art at a fundamental level.

"Museums are followers," said Mr. Manetas, the New York artist, in an e-mail message. "Digital is fashionable, and they also hope to attract sponsors and public."

But he added: "They are also like mothers who want to play Doom with their son, hoping to communicate with him. They just ruin the game."

One of the works of art cited is by Miltos Manetas. His art is a video sequence in which Lara Croft repeatedly dies. Sounds like lazy art. He probably just got to a part in the game he couldn't get past and filmed his efforts.

Putting yer ugly mug in a video game

The NY Times again has the story. They're changing their motto to "All the game news that's fit to print."

The booth, made by 3Q Inc. of Atlanta, creates a three-dimensional digital image rather than a strip of photographs for your scrapbook. The image, burned onto a CD, can be uploaded to popular video games like Quake III Arena or Counter-Strike and projected onto the head of a virtual character. The booth even allows digital warriors to add a grisly scar or shape the neck and face to look more muscular.

"Some people go for a really, really far-out face," said Casey Hogg, the manager at GameStop, one of three retail stores in the country that is testing the machines for 3Q. A common pose is "gnashing teeth, furrowed brow, flared nostrils," he said.

Scary!

Gathering of Developer's future

According to Blue's News, there ain't one. Good scoop by Blue's and it confirms the Fatbabies rumor.

Take Two Interactive has apparently been considering consolidating GodGames into their New York office for some time now, and the original plan was for Mike Wilson to relocate up to that office. He decided to pass on this, and instead has started Substance TV, a new, subscription-based, interactive DVD magazine. Almost all of the former GodGames staff has joined Substance TV, with only a handful of people making the switch to New York to be part of Take Two's new GodGames label. The person we spoke with assured us that all of GoD's planned titles will still be published, including, of course, Duke Nukem Forever.

After Take 2 purchased GOD, basically saving their bacon, we never understood how it all worked. Was Take 2 the publisher? No, GOD was, but GOD was owned by Take 2, who were themselves a publisher. Seems like there may have been an unnecessary management layer.

Arcanum editor nixed for D&D Master Tools?

This story on D&D Third Edition News seems to indicate that. If you recall, Wizards of the Coast had an agreement in place to use Troika's editor from Arcanum as a map creation tool for their Master Tools product. Seems WotC has abandoned that now, according to an email Third Edition News received from WotC's Byrt Martinez:

Essentially, when the decision was made to use the isometric graphic engine for the mapper, it was in anticipation of moving towards internet play. However, with the advent of the Hasbro/Infogrames deal, we sold off the rights to produce electronic games, hence that direction became null and void. The asset of being able to play online, now became a liability to the remaining direction for Master Tools, which is to aid table-top play solely. This is now the only focus for Master Tools.

3am

Join us for a spin through this and that where games may or probably won't be mentioned. First, we'll visit Sports Illustrated's Rick Reilly, one of the finest columnists going. He's brilliant, and he does it weekly. Believe us, a weekly column is hard to do, and to come up with as many 80-yard TD tosses Reilly makes is Hall of Fame stuff. This week he got the Yankees' Derek Jeter to agree to let him look at Jeter's fan mail.

Jeter is one of the rare athletes who tries to respond to all his mail himself, but he admitted, "I'm a couple road trips behind." It's no wonder. Reading his mail for one day is more depressing than watching the NASDAQ Composite. Most requests came from people who "wouldn't normally ask for something like this," except that they were hearing-impaired; had lost a grandfather, a best friend or their appendix; had a brain tumor, an aneurysm, a breach baby, essential tremor disease, breast cancer, colitis, cerebral palsy, Down syndrome or colon cancer; had gone through a rough divorce or fallen off a bike; were abandoned or unloved.

One hopelessly doomed woman needed an autograph because she had "lost four close friends, a father-in-law and almost an alcoholic father, had an apartment fire, had a miscarriage of twins and has to take care of my loser husband." Lady, you don't need an autograph; you need a telethon.

We'll give that one a bronzed "Heh". Now it's time for some other funny business. You like comics, as in books and strips? Salon's got an interesting look at the infighting that's going on between Scott McLoud and Gary Groth. Good stuff, especially all the links. We liked this quote:

"It's like opera," says Steve Conley, creator of Astounding Space Thrills, a daily adventure webcomic. "The fighting is so fierce because the stakes are so small. No other industry could have this kind of debate because no other industry is so small and close-knit."

Not quite. Fierce fights in the tiny, tinny halls of academia are common. Blood is spilled over which authors should be included in the canon. Like we're going to read Proust anyway?

In our bid to become the be-all, end-all portal site for gamers, we thought we'd begin a series of hygiene articles with some shaving tips. The best we could come up with on our own was "Grab a razor and pretend it's a Zamboni machine and your face is the ice," so we thought it wise to consult with the experts. With Quick Shave (tm), in fact:

DO NOT USE DULL or RUSTED RAZOR BLADE CARTRIDGES

DO NOT SHAVE IN DIM LIGHTS!!

SHAVE WITH ONE HAND

And, most importantly:

DON�T FORGET TO SHAVE IN AREAS YOU CAN�T EASILY SEE

In other words, shave your ass, you ignorant orangutans! Coming tomorrow, tips on applying roll-on deodorant. DON�T FORGET TO APPLY IT IN AREAS YOU CAN'T EASILY SMELL.

X-COM cattle mutilations? Who knows? Something's weird in Montana, though.

Ranchers in Dupuyer and Fort Shaw have reported four cattle deaths in which portions of the animals' faces were cut or peeled off and eyeballs and genitals were removed.

The animals had not been shot, and investigators say whoever is responsible left few clues behind.

The killings are similar to a string of cattle deaths in the 1970s in the same general area, in which more than 60 cattle in five counties were found mutilated. Those cases remain unsolved, and prompted speculation at the time from some that the deaths were the work of aliens or satanic cults.

Life would be dull if all possibilty of aliens and satanists were removed. We'd be left with a world full of deputies.

Dan Campbell, a deputy with the Pondera County Sheriff's Department, believes humans are responsible, but their motives remain unclear.

"I don't believe in little green men," he said. "I think 500 people have asked me, 'Well, what's doing it?' If I knew, I would get it in the paper."

We believe in little green men, but only after a fifth of scotch. Speaking of Satanists, this is interesting.

EIGHT double murders attributed to the so-called Monster of Florence were masterminded by a Satanic sect involving �wealthy and respected citizens above suspicion�, according to police.

The victims of the killings, which took place in Tuscany between 1968 and 1985, were all courting couples who were either shot or had their throats cut in the woods around Florence. The murderer, who used the same gun and knife, always struck when there was little or no moonlight.

The Monster of Florence? Isn't that a Rossini opera?

Let's go with the mutilation theme. Few literary attacks have ever been as vicious as Byron's against Southey.

"Go, little book, from this my solitude!
I cast thee on the waters -- go thy ways!
And if, as I believe, thy vein be good,
The world will find thee after many days."
When Southey's read, and Wordsworth understood,
I can't help putting in my claim to praise --
The four first rhymes are Southey's every line:
For God's sake, reader! take them not for mine.

That's one stanza, from many, from several works, including one 30+ page poem wholly dedicated to the Total Annihilation of Southey. Byron definitely had a hard-on over the guy, probably because he condemned Byron for his antics, including Byron's incestuous affair with his own half-sister. Imagine that. Interestingly, Southey's completely forgotten these days other than as a reference point in Byron's attacks. There is one work of Southey's that everyone knows, however: Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

In another little piece of Byronic trivia tattooed on our skull, within decades of his being interred, grave robbers broke into Byron's grave and stole his...schlong. No kidding. You can probably buy it on eBay, or a reasonable facsimile thereof.

One last attack. From the 1968 Democratic Convention, televised live on ABC, William F. Buckley to Gore Vidal:

Now listen, you queer, stop calling me a crypto-nazi or I'll sock you in your Goddamn face and you'll stay plastered.

Obviously, this was before the invention of Prozac.

We need to indulge ourselves now and then, but tomorrow, back to the normal, game-related 3ams. Because god knows, there's no such thing as too much gaming news!

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