Daily News Spin — July 9, 2001 (Monday)

Crossroads at the crossroads

Crossroads, one of the popular networks devoted to massively multiplayer games, went dark and then relaunched last week. Now it seems that their funding has fallen through again, so they are turning to a donationware model. Alex Macris, CEO of Warcry, said this:

As you may have noticed, we have been running house ads for EzzMedia for the past several days. These ads were supposed to be replaced by a major corporate sponsorship. Unfortunately, that sponsorship has not been forthcoming, leaving the Crossroads revival without a steady revenue stream. Therefore, we have decided to being pursuing alternative sources of cash. In the future, that will mean merchandise and special product offerings, but for now, we'll just be opening up to contributions from you, our community. All contributions will go towards the network's bandwidth and other costs, and any excess will be invested in better hardware and software, to make this the fastest, most reliable network around. We appreciate any and all support you can give.

They hope to raise at least the $2000 a month they need to cover their bandwidth costs.

Not the Sovereign we saw

According to this Gamespy preview, Sovereign is nothing at all like the game it was originally designed to be, a mix of RTS and Civilization style gameplay.

Now it's just an RTS with some persistent elements. Just goes to show how previews of a game more than six months before it comes out are often a waste of time and effort.

One for kids and dads and one just for dads

Ananova has a couple of brief stories of interest. In the first, new research reveals that dads who play videogames with their kids are doing some beneficial bonding.

Sociologist Nicola Saxby-Williams said the trend amounts to an era of 'new daddism'.

But the kids are not getting an easy ride - three-quarters of adults said they play to the best of their ability, refusing to allow children to win.

That's just because if the dads don't try hard, the kids will wipe the floor with them.

The other story is about the original creator of Lara, Toby Gard. His regret? Her rack's a bit too radical for his tastes.

Mr Gard told The Mirror: "I just wish that when she was taken out of my hands they hadn't made her boobs so big. She was never meant to be a page-three-type girl.

A "page-three girl" refers to the British tabloid practice of putting nudes on page three of their newspapers. They were PC Accelerator-ish before there was a PC Accelerator.

Not bosom buddies

The New York Times is running an article about some unrest among Hollywood's actors over cyber actors like the ones in the upcoming Final Fantasy flick. Seems they're uncomfortable with how life-like they are.

"I am very troubled by it," said Tom Hanks, who does not like to think that his carefully chosen roles and hard-fought performances can be tampered with by after-the-fact computer auteurs, or that someone might make unwanted use of his digital self. "But it's coming down, man. It's going to happen. And I'm not sure what actors can do about it."

The specter of the digital actor � a kind of cyberslave who does the producer's bidding without a whimper or salary � has been a figure of terror for the last few years in Hollywood, as early technical experiments proved that it was at least possible to create a computer image that could plausibly replace a human being. But as "Final Fantasy" makes its way into theaters � the first of what promises to be a string of movies trying to put this challenge to the test � many wonder if the threat is as real as it once seemed, or if it simply takes computer animation down a fruitless cul-de-sac.

First we get our videogame characters in the movies, and then we gamers move in too. Instead of an Eastwood, the next generation of movies will feature some paunchy, pale-skinned kid with a squeaky voice but sure and steady hands on the mouse and keyboard saying, "Go ahead punk, make my day."

Or maybe not.

3am

The New York Times has yet another article about the A.I. website puzzle-game that's sprung up. Will someone please solve it so we can quit reading about it?

We're hearing about a cool and ambitious mod for Jagged Alliance 2 that's out now. It sounds like it's better than the official expansion. We haven't tried it yet, but if you're a JA2 fan, be sure to check out Deidranna Lives. New weapons, new sounds, new mercs, and many hours of new gameplay. You can download it from StrategyPlanet. Thanks David!

Max Payne will be out in 25 days. Or so they say.

There's talk of using PS2 running linux as computers in third-world countries, not because they're cheap so much as they're easy to use.

Ars Technica, a popular PC news site, is offering monthly subscriptions now to offset declining ad revenue. The content will remain free, but subscribers will get other benefits, such as a special title when posting on the message boards and discounts at an online store.

The online radio network eYada is going dark. "We ran out of money," said a spokesperson. "Our audience figures had doubled, but we were unable to sell advertising." Sounds familar, doesn't it? We saw this at Dotcom Scoop. Also, Webvan has filed Chapter 11. They burned through about a billion dollars.

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