Daily News Spin — September 21, 2001 (Friday)

What's wrong with this list?

Here are the top twenty selling games for August:

1 Diablo 2 Expansion Set: Lord of Destruction - Vivendi Universal Publishing $34
2 Max Payne - Gathering of Developers $43
3 The Sims - Electronic Arts $42
4 MS Flight Simulator 2000 - Microsoft $29
5 The Sims: House Party Expansion Pack - Electronic Arts $29
6 The Sims: Livin Large Expansion Pack - Electronic Arts $29
7 Diablo 2 - Vivendi Universal Publishing $40
8 MP Roller Coaster Tycoon - Infogrames Entertainment $27
9 MS Age Of Empires 2: Age of Kings - Microsoft $44
10 Kings Quest VIII: Mask Of Eternity - Vivendi Universal Publishing $18
11 MP Roller Coaster Tycoon Loopy Landscapes Expansion Pack - Infogrames Entertainment $28
12 Half-Life: Blue Shift - Vivendi Universal Publishing $29
13 Sim Theme Park - Electronic Arts $20
14 Black & White - Electronic Arts $42
15 Myst 3 Exile- Ubisoft $43
16 Sim City 3000 - Electronic Arts $18
17 MS MechCommander 2- Microsoft $43
18 MS Age Of Empires 2: Conquerors Expansion Add-On - Microsoft $30
19 MS Train Simulator - Microsoft $47
20 Baldur's Gate 2: Throne Of Bhaal- Interplay $29

What's weird? Kings Quest VIII making the list. What's up with that?

Stomped getting stomped

Venerable gaming news portal Stomped is losing a couple of its reporters, Redwood and Aurora. Why? We'll let Redwood explain.

I did not expect to have to do this so soon, if at all, but today is my last day as an employee of Stomped. What does this mean? It means that although we were able to stand up to the internet economy decline for a while, it's finally really hurting us. There aren't enough funds to pay for my job here, so I will have to find other means so I can pay my bills and not end up on the street. :) I will still be allowed to update Stomped for the time being as I am able to, but don't expect much as I am moving this weekend and won't have an internet connection for a bit....

That's too bad. Redwood said Stomped will continue, but we're left to wonder for how long?

At the movies

Just a rundown of some of the recent footage of games posted in case Blockbuster's out of the movies you wanted this weekend.

Age of Mythology movie
Ghost Recon movie
Freedom Force movie
Etherlords movie
Xbox game movies

Grab some popcorn and enjoy!

A late night update, for no reason

Forgive us a moment's indulgence. Years ago we were introduced to the writings of Israel's greatest contemporary poet, Yehuda Amichai. He too was deeply moved by terrorist attacks. Here's Amichai, after one such attack.

The radius of the bomb was twelve inches
And the radius of its effective force seven yards
Containing four dead and eleven wounded.
And around those, in a wider circle
Of pain and time, are scattered two hospitals
And one graveyard. But the young woman,
Buried in the place she came from,
Over a hundred kilometers from here,
Widens the circle quite a bit,
And the lonely man mourning her death
In the provinces of a Mediterranean land,
Includes the whole world in the circle.
And I shall omit the scream of orphans
That reaches God's throne
And way beyond, and widens the circle
To no end and no God.

Coming Monday: A poetry-free Quarter to Three update full of wise-ass remarks to make up for this.

Snowball makes desperate bid to avoid delisting

Snowball, lord and master of IGN and the IGN network (Gone Gold), is attempting to avoid delisting by doing a one for six reverse stock split to boost their share price over $1, according to this MSN Money story.

"We believe that the reverse stock split is in the best interests of our stockholders, as it will assist the company in meeting its continued listing requirements on the Nasdaq Small Cap Market," said Snowball's CEO, Mark Jung.

Perhaps we should remind Jung of what happened the last time they did a reverse one for three split. The stock price immediately dropped back to pre-split prices.

By the way, in case you didn't know this, "Snowball is the leading Gen i network for Web-centric young adults who have grown up using the Internet." We sure didn't know that!

Xbox launch delayed one week

Yahoo has the Reuters story.

Microsoft Corp. said on Friday that it would delay the launch of its XBox video game console by one week to Nov. 15 but declined to clarify exactly how many units it will have available at launch.

The decision was made ``after going through a review -- obviously doing a lot of reviewing this past week -- of our integrated systems for launch,'' said Robbie Bach, chief XBox officer for Microsoft.

It's getting interesting. Earlier, Nintendo dropped back their launch to November 18th, if memory serves, after initially planning on beating the Xbox to market. Now it looks like the two systems will be launched with days of one another. Thanks Erik!

Lawsuits a-plenty

BioWare has sued Interplay over breach of contract, according to Avault.:

A lawsuit has been filed against Interplay Entertainment by Canadian software developer BioWare. BioWare alleges in its complaint that Interplay has breached two contracts with BioWare by sublicensing distribution of BioWare games to third parties without the knowledge or consent of BioWare. A second lawsuit has been filed against Interplay, British distributor Virgin Interactive, and French company Titus Interactive by BioWare and Parallax Software, a software developer based in Champaign, Illinois. The complaint alleges that there are additional royalties due to both BioWare and Parallax.

Video games make us wimps?

Yahoo raises the concern:

Games and simulators can teach many things. In fact, as much time as young people spend with them, they can hardly help but learn something. But what?

This is a topic of particular interest to my friend Marc Prensky, author of the book Digital Game-Based Learning and master of twitchspeed.com, a portal devoted to the topic of games as educational tools.

And:

One concern Prensky raises, although obliquely, is that a generation raised on shoot-'em-up video games and battles that are never quite won might have serious reservations about going into war. Why? Because if there are no winners, you might think twice about the point of going to war. That's all well and good, but it's the sort of thinking that would have lost World War II well before the beaches of Normandy.

We have may have trouble winning, but we can always use the Konami code if things get dire, right?

Thanks Rama!

Simsville kaputsville

EA has cancelled Simsville, according to CG Online.

It wasn't up to the standards of Maxis, according to a spokesperson for Maxis, who also stated that despite this, the team did a great job and is being reassigned to other products like The Sims Online and other future projects.

What? It wasn't as good as The Streets of SimCity?

New at Quarter to Three

While our newsmeister has been busy playing Omnious Horizons, a Christian Shooter, the news has rolled on here at Qt3. Tom "Tim" Chick has posted an Early Hours on Empire Earth and a new Shoot Club.

Meanwhile, guest superstar Tim "Tom" Chown has written about the recent ECTS tradeshow, and regular superstar Brad Wardell has written about multiplayer gaming.

Finally, Bruce Geryk's Reach for the Stars piece has been rebutted by either Tom or Tim.

Lockjaw

Conspiracy game fans, rejoice. Another one is in the works. Lockjaw is a fan-made game that's patterened after the web game based on the movie A.I. Wired has the scoop:

Like the A.I. game, which was neither officially announced nor advertised by Dreamworks, Lockjaw will be rolled out stealthily.

The hope is that players will happen upon the biotech conspiracy-themed game on their own or through word-of-mouth, and that their first encounter with Lockjaw might leave it unclear whether or not they�ve stumbled onto something real or simulated.

The article also mentions a couple of other games.

Plexata, created by Tactile Media of Sunnyvale, California, is already underway but has received mixed reviews.

Electronic Arts launched Majestic this past July and claims to have signed up 100,000 players for the game's free introductory chapter. Majestic costs $10 a month to continue playing. EA has not released numbers on how many people who played the first chapter have paid to continue.

So they were happy enough to let us know that 100,000 downloaded the free episode, but they won't tell us how many have paid for the next one? We smell a conspiracy!

3am

We reported on Monday that Lum the Mad's site was closing down. It is and it isn't, it seems. Most of the writers are going to start a new site with a new name and transfer the content from Lum's to it. Lum the Mad's will be no more, but the spirit will live on, etc. Somehow the madness will continue, though the Lumness will not.

CNET, lord and master of Gamespot, is in a freefall with its stock price. Since Monday it's lost about half its market valuation. Crazy. All the stocks have been hit hard, but CNET's getting a Singapore caning.

Speaking of Gamespot, they have a demo of the new Kohan game, Ahriman's Gift. It 's 46 megs. Thanks Erik!

As of last weekend, Nintendo's Gamecube had only sold 300,000 of the initial 450,000 units. We find that quite surprising and don't know what it means, but we're stocking up on canned goods.

Meanwhile, the buzz now is that Microsoft will launch the Xbox with only 300,000 units shipped to stores.

Thai teens stake sexual favors from their girlfriends on bets in video games, according to Annanova. Well, that's one way to get women more involved in gaming! What's the world coming to? We fondly recall the days when "Thai stick" meant something altogether different. We spotted this at Frictionless Insight.

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