Daily News Spin — September 25, 2001 (Tuesday)

Biting the Hand on the blame game

Jessica Mulligan's Biting the Hand looks at the Scratch and Sniff Manifesto, which blames sucky games on corporate evil. Mulligan disagrees.

I know that it is heresy to say so and I�ll probably lose my Rant Against the Rat Bastard Publishers guild card for daring it, but: Internal development teams lie.

Like cheap rugs on a mud hut floor, sometimes. I�ve been in situations where Producers have actually faked code deliveries for months, then finally �fessed up as Beta test time approached. I�ve been coincidentally seated in a high-walled restaurant booth next to members of an internal dev team from a company I worked at, listening while they crowed among themselves that the execs actually bought the short development timeline and listened while they planned when to announce they�d need an extra six months. I once watched helplessly while the top two executives at a non-profit organization, two men with honor and integrity, were fired by their Board of Directors because a project we were developing under license from them was going to be twelve months late. The project was late because a Producer had blatantly lied for six months about the state of the game and it hadn�t been caught out because his Executive Producer trusted him.

Update: We've been informed by a lawyer for the Scratch 'N Sniff industry that the manifesto is actually called Scratchware. Our apologies to everyone who makes his or her living in the odor industry.

They shoot, they score!

Penny Arcade takes on Sony's Kelly Flock. Flock was recently quoted in Edge magazine about how he loves customer input.

"No, we never talk to consumers � they just fuck us up. Someone asked for a copy of our market research which made us take the decision to do EverQuest. I said we hadn't done any market research. Had we done, the game would never have been made. We never focus on them. Gamers don't know what they want. We just want to know if they have a valid credit card."

And yes, we confirmed that Mr. Flock did indeed say that. Needless to say, this has caused a minor furor. Penny Arcade had this to say about it.

Seriously though, you've got to love Kelly Flock. His brand of unrepentant evil is so straightforward that you can calibrate your own moral compass by it. It's like a service he provides - want to be good? Oppose him! In a time where our actions are represented more and more by a diverse ethical gradient, it's almost a comfort to know that the scale still includes fixed regions for unadorned wickedness.

Penny Arcade also pegged Flock over a year ago in this strip.

American McGee's "It's not called Dark Wonderland" Alice movie

The IMDB's Ask a Filmmaker asked John August how the screenplay for the Alice movie is coming along.

Paul Rosenberg, one of the very talented producers on Go, met with videogame designer American McGee, who was working on the Alice game. American showed him character sketches and some rough animatics. Paul flipped and convinced American that it should be a movie, then shanghaied me into meeting with them at E3, the big videogame shindig in Los Angeles. After that, we met with Wes Craven, who signed on to produce and maybe direct.

There's a little bit more. It ends with this:

Currently, the producers are working with other writers to come up with the script, so I have no idea how close they are to being able to film. While some projects do get lost in development hell, my instinct is that Alice will get made at some point.

The Gamecube ad campaign

Adweek has the juice about this $75 marketing campaign for the North American launch.

Seven different TV commercials will begin to air next week in support of the Nov. 18 launch of Nintendo's GameCube. Print ads will appear in more than 50 magazines, and included in the mix will be outdoor and online support.

Commercials will also air in theaters in November prior to such heavily anticipated movies as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and Lord of the Rings. In addition, Nintendo has partnered with Dr. Pepper and Starz cable channel for holiday promotions.

We're on board with all this except for the Starz cable channel stuff. That's a pretty lame cable channel, isn't it?

Update: Er, that was supposed to be $75 million, but what's a few decimal places among friends?

3am

Titus is pulling their Top Gun game ads because they feature planes fighting in the Middle East. Hey, isn't that realisitc? Spotted at Women Gamers.

Voodoo Extreme is still not updating. Hey, they're making us look industrious now!

Dark Age of Camelot gold? EBGames says yes, but no official word yet from Mythic. We spotted this at Frictionless Insight.

Take Two execs have recently been purchasing the company's stock on the open market. Whether this is because they think it's a bargain due to the nearly 50% slide in share price over the last few months or in hopes of reversing the slide, we don't know.

Throne of Darkness is shipping today. We're not hearing good things about it.

According to a thread on Adventure Gamer, Spanish game company Dinamic Multimedia has shut down. This puts the keboosh on Runaway, an adventure game that has been published in Spain and which was coming to North America.

Blizzard has started a fictional journal that's an account of a dwarf's journey through the lands of World of Warcraft. The first entry ends with the dwarf stopping in a pub and quaffing ale.

I came across a rustic tavern known as the Goldshire Inn, where for a few silver, I indulged in spiced venison and a frothy flagon of rich ale. Ah, comrades, to describe that sweet brew would require a whole separate entry!

He probably banged a tavern wench then, but dwarves, being modest sorts, don't like to bang and tell.

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