Daily News Spin — October 1, 2001 (Monday)

Play games, make money

Wired has a story about players making money from selling EverQuest accounts and gear. While this isn't really anything new, it's still an eye-opener to read about a site making $3500 a day from this activity.

Another veteran salesman, Jonathan Yantis, specializes in buying EverQuest accounts from players and selling off all the characters' equipment piece by piece, plus the account.

He has set up his own site, MySuperSales, which does about $3,500 in business a day, he said. He claims the site has supported him for the last two years.

Sony Online has banned accounts that have been sold, but apparently the practice is still widespread. There's an eBay-like auction site where 15-20 players make $5000 a month according to the article.

Another GOD in the making?

United Developers has announced itself. According to their website, they are...

...an administration, business and management infrastructure for game development and game publishing.

So far Mumbo Jumbo, Rogue, Mac Play, and Inertia are in their stable. Although the company was formed in early 2000, this is the first we've heard of them. Their website makes it unclear just what role the company plays too. Do they finance development of games? Do they publish the games? We're not sure.

Infogrames fourth quarter results

Looks like they lost $23 million for the quarter and $60 million for the year. The good news is that for fiscal year 2000 they lost a whopping $397 million, so the losses are getting smaller.

New Ziff game execs

Ziff Davis has promoted two people to executive positions, according to a press release posted at Excite.

John Davison was named overall editorial director of the Game Group, and Simon Cox, launch editor and creative director.

In addition to his promotion to editorial director, John Davison will continue to serve as editor-in-chief of the Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine and play a key role in defining the overall editorial/content development strategy for the Game Group.

Simon Cox will be responsible for overseeing the content for special issues such as Pocket Games, and the quarterly GameBoy publication, development of new franchises such as Xbox Nation, and will be on the launch team for new projects such as Game Now. He will also serve as a leader and consultant to the editorial and design package teams. Simon Cox joins Ziff Davis Media Game Group from Imagine Media, where he was editor-in-chief of the Official DreamCast Magazine and the launch editor of Revolution.

Game Now is a new magazine aimed at casual gamers, we think.

Game over for British game industry?

The London Sunday Times looks at the faltering British game industry. In the usual parade of comments about losses that companies like Eidos are enduring, we found these comments interesting.

Jane Cavanagh, chief executive of Sci, which fell from �111m at the beginning of last year to �13.38m, is an expert in bad-taste games. She developed Carmageddon, in which players get points for the number of pedestrians hit, and signed up Ronnie Biggs as an adviser for her Great Train Robbery game. She is developing a war game set in the Middle East.

"There has consistently been an appetite for these types of game," she says. "Conflict: Desert Storm is entertaining and based on fact - it in no way glorifies war. As far as violence goes, it is what boys want, and I don't think what is going on in America will stop people playing - it may even attract more interest."

Forgotten Realms TV series

We missed this announcement at the Wizards of the Coast site. Fireworks Television has signed a deal with Hasbro to produce a live action TV series based on the popular Dungeons and Dragons setting.

Fireworks is a subsidiary of CanWest Entertainment, which is headquartered in Toronto. Fireworks is responsible for Gene Rodenberry's Andromeda and Relic Hunter starring Tia Carrera, among other things.

So yeah, they do schlock, but what do you expect? Besides, whatever they do can't be worse than the recent D&D movie.

3am

Is it a little laughter that we need now? Then behold the contrition of yesterday's frivolous, the new fashion in gravity. The man who edits Vanity Fair has ruled that the age of cynicism is over. He would know. I always wondered what it would take to put a cramp in the trashy mind, and at last I have my answer: a mass grave in lower Manhattan. So now depth has buzz. The papers are filled with hip people seeing through hipness, composing elegiac farewells to the days of Gary Condit and Jennifer Lopez. The on dit has moved beyond the apple martini. It has discovered evil and the problem of its meaning. No doubt about it, seriousness is in. So it is worth remembering that there are large swathes of American society in which seriousness was never out. Not everybody has lived as if the media is all there is. Not everybody has been consecrated only to cash and cultural signifiers. Not everybody has been a pawn of irony. Everybody was shocked by the attack, but not everybody was philosophically unprepared for it. For a thoughtful life is not premised on an experience of catastrophe, except for the exceedingly thoughtless. There are states of happiness that are not states of stupidity. We should not have to choose between being imbeciles and being mourners.

- Leon Wieseltier from The New Republic

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