Daily News Spin — May 30, 2001 (Wednesday)

For great justice! Four more E3 previews

We look at four more from E3, starting with the superhero game Freedom Force, catching an X-Wing to Star Wars Galaxies Online, downing a few dwarven molatov cocktails in Myth III: The Wolf Age, and dying hard in Nakatomi Plaza.

Gooseman talks Counter-Strike

Minh Le is interviewed by Gamasutra. Here's a bit about how he got started.

About five years ago I was in first year university and Quake came out. I think the SDK was released around that time, and I picked it up. At the time I was really into games; I've been into games since I was a kid, so it was natural that I picked up the SDK and started to play around with it. It took me about a year to make my first mod for Quake, which was a really cheesy mod called Navy Seals�it was a single player mod. It was nothing special. It was great because that was when I got really interested in making games and I knew that I wanted to do this for a living. Actually, at the time I didn't think that I could make a living doing that because it just seemed like a hobby. I really planned on just becoming a programmer, and just working for some big company, you know, living a normal life. I guess that changed.

EverQuest seen through academia

Nicholas Yee of Haverford College has done an extensive study of EverQuest. Grab a glass of water, as its many different categories are a bit dry.

On average, EQ players have 4.96 (N=1236) characters on their account which are above level 5. There is no significant gender difference. Male players, however, have on average 1.24 (N=918) female characters above level 5, while female players have on average 0.39 (N=157) male characters above level 5. This is significant at the p=.03 level. Male players also have significantly more characters of the opposite gender than female players even when all their characters are counted, regardless of level (T[1196]=4.88, Mmale(1010)=1.25, Mfemale(188)=0.44, p<.001).

What does it all mean? We have no fucking clue.

It's dead, Jim

X-COM Alliance has been put out of its misery, according to this PCGameplay story.

Having heard rumours that X-Com Alliance was hanging in the balance, we spoke to Simon Callaghan, PR Manager at infogrames' London Office, to see if he could put the record straight.

Unfortunately, Simon confirmed that Alliance has indeed been officially canned. "We acquired assets from Hasbro when Infogrames took over and looked at each title individually to see if they would fit in with our release schedule," said Simon.

Just do an updated version of the first game in the series. Why is that so hard to understand? C'mon, you knuckleheads!

More on Interplay's sale

Computer and Videogame News is reporting that the deal to sell Interplay is done and will be announced in the next ten days.

Pacific Century Cyber Works, the Chinese consortium fingered around a month ago in making an active bid for Activision, is heavily rumoured to have signed a buyout deal for Interplay this morning. Interplay sources have confirmed that the company will announce the deal within 10 days.

Chinese, eh? We're trying to make sense of this, but it's inscrutable. Hey, did you hear about the new German-Chinese restaurant? An hour after you eat there you're hungry for power. Please supply your own rimshot now.

The Incredible Shrinking Internet

Desslock's RPG News is reporting the eUniverse is dropping their game coverage. This is the network that the Gamers Alliance network was folded into a couple of months ago.

Meanwhile Fatbabies is whispering that IGN may go belly up as soon as June 1.

Finally, Lum the Mad is reporting that SitePowerUp, a provider of many free message boards for the massively multiplayer online gaming community, is discontinuing their service as of June 1.

Who's the piano going to fall on next?

3am

Avault is reporting that Allegiance, the multiplayer-only space sim from Microsoft, is becoming a free-to-play rather than a subscription game. Why? It didn't sell.

Version 1.6 of the UT mod Strikeforce is now available. It's 255 megs, though.

EA.com's COO has resigned. That may mean that EA's losing confidence in the online venture.

Square has announced that Final Fantasy XI, fee-based online game they've been working on, will debut in Japan in March 2002.

The Dreamcast has sold out in Japan. If you want one, you might consider getting one soon. No telling how long the supply will last in the U.S. Meanwhile Avault is reporting the Half-Life for the Dreamcast has been cancelled.

Mark has a new GameSpin up at GameSpy.

Tom has a review of Evil Islands up on Computer Games Online and a review of Merchant Prince II up on Gamepower.

Click here to read yesterday's news