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Archived News:
Command and Conquer DEN (thanks Ant) has more on the mystery Command &
Conquer III screenshot ( story) which was yoinked at EA's request.
They quote EALA game design director Adam Isgreen on the origins of the
shot: What Mark said is true. What you saw was a concept / inspirational
piece of art that we did over a year ago that displays on our internal EA
monitors here at EALA. Concept art is our "What if?" avenue to explore things we
may or may not want to do in the future with game content, a certain look, or
atmosphere / tone.
FYI, it's an image of a Scrin Primal defending against a GDI attack on a Scrin
base. Obviously, the primal is winning. =)
And yes, there are still a bunch of us ex-westwood guys here.
Vivendi Universal Games sends along the announcement of a reorganization,
which is costing 350 people their jobs. The release specifies that Blizzard is
not impacted by the moves, but it seems likely this is connected with recent
speculative stories of the closings of Papyrus ( story) and
Impressions ( story). Here's the word: VIVENDI UNIVERSAL
GAMES ANNOUNCES REORGANIZATION AND COST REDUCTIONS AS PART OF TURNAROUND PLAN
LOS ANGELES – June 21, 2004 – Vivendi Universal Games (VU Games) today announced
another step in its turnaround plan to improve operating effectiveness, reduce
costs and position for growth. The changes include a significant staff reduction
in its North American based operations resulting in the elimination of 350 staff
positions. The Company's Blizzard Entertainment studio was not part of the staff
reduction.
"Restructuring the organization and reducing our cost base are necessary to
improve our operating effectiveness and profitability," said VU Games CEO Bruce
Hack. "This constitutes another important step in our turnaround plan aimed to
better position the Company for growth."
With a global and more focused organization in place, VU Games is looking ahead
to the second half of the year with several major releases scheduled for launch.
VU Games plans to release World of Warcraft from Blizzard Entertainment, marking
the Company's entry into the massively multi-player online role-playing games
category. Other current and upcoming releases for 2004 include Crash Twinsanity,
Leisure Suit Larry, The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, Van
Helsing, Ground Control II, Fight Club and Spyro: A Hero's Tail.
The Warhammer Online
Website (thanks Bruce Jongejans) has word that the MMOG game based on the
Warhammer table-top series has been cancelled: It is with a great deal of
sadness that I have to inform the community that we have decided to discontinue
the development of Warhammer Online and will be closing down this website with
immediate effect.
This has been a difficult and painful decision but it was taken following a
following a full review of the progress of the game, costs to date and future
costs of the project. As a result both Games Workshop and Climax Development
Limited, the computer games developer, have agreed to terminate the development
project.
I would like to say a personal thanks to all of the people who have followed our
development over the last few years, your constant support and enthusiasm has
meant a great deal to us.
Robin Dews
Icculus.org now offers
downloads of new version 3236 patches to update the Mac and Linux editions of
Unreal Tournament 2004. Thanks Frans. Word is that this should address the
"insanely long level load times" under Linux.
A new Worms: Forts Under
Siege movie is online, showing off the next installment in Team17's leg-free
strategy series. This clip is available on
3D Gamers and
Worthplaying.
Also, the GravRally Downloads
Section now offers an overview movie from this upcoming Torque-engine
futuristic racing game, available in low and higher resolutions.
- Unreal Engine
There's
a Tim Sweeney Q&A
on Beyond3D talking about the future of Unreal, discussing plans for
Unreal Engine 3 and beyond: "DirectX9 is our minimum hardware target for
Unreal Engine 3. A great deal of generalization, improvement, and even
simplification has been made possible by eliminating legacy code paths and
formulating all rendering around fully-general pixel shader programs."
- KOTOR 2
Star
Wars Knights of the Old Republic II - The Sith Lords Q&A on PlayMoreConsoles
talks with Chris Avellone, lead designer on the upcoming KOTOR sequel: "When
not fighting crime in my homemade TRON costume, I pretend to do a lot of
work on Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords. I've been
told repeatedly not to say that in interviews, and to give my title as 'lead
designer' or 'co-owner,' but one too many concussions from super villains
and stones thrown by small children makes remembering things like that
difficult."
- H&D2: Sabre Squadron
The
Sabre Squadron Q&A on Computer And Video Games talks with
Alexander Sila, lead designer on Illusion Softworks'
upcoming Hidden & Dangerous expansion. They discuss "new missions, co-op
play, further multiplayer additions plus more, more, more...being crammed
into the add-on." Thanks Frans.
- Operation Matriarchy
HomeLAN
Fed's Operation Matriarchy Q&A talks with some of the folks at MADia
about plans for their upcoming science fiction shooter: "Oh, just after
eight years of work on simulators we decided to make something different,
but still based on the world that we created for 'Echelon' series. We
decided to make a shooter, and luckily enough the publisher supported this
idea with enthusiasm."
The Darwinia Website is now
accepting sign-ups for
beta testing for Introversion Software's upcoming action/strategy game. They
will be accepting a small number of testers, saying: "Anybody can apply to be a
beta tester, and Introversion will select from the applicants a group of able
minded individuals with the right attitude and the right hardware to make the
test go as smoothly as possible." Thanks
DIY Games.
EA Ships Ultima Online
7th Anniversary Edition (thanks Frans) is the press release announcing that
the anthology of all six-hundred (or so - actually it is five) expansions for
the fantasy MMORPG is now in stores.
The official Medieval Lords Website
is now online, dedicated to Medieval Lords: Build, Defend, Expand, the upcoming
construction game set in the middle ages. The site offers information on the
game, screenshots, and links to the recently released Medieval Lords E3 trailer.
The UT2004 Strategy Guide, Part I on
FileFront offers tweaking tips, weapon and vehicle guidance, and tips for
specific game types.
According to the calendar, today is the summer solstice, the official first day
of summer. Of course this is hard to believe in this two-season area, where
we've already had a couple of heat waves.
In conjunction with the beginning of summer, it looks like I now have a
mostly-dead (apologies to Miracle Max) front-lawn, as a majority of it is now
brown grass. When the guys were working on the roof on Friday, they tossed all
the old shingles onto the lawn. They cleaned them up before departing, and the
lawn looked fine at the time, so as far as I'm able to tell this isn't from
shading the lawn... it seems more like the shingles were poisonous to grass, as
where ever they touched has died over the following couple of days. Needless to
say, I am unhappy, though I'm not exactly sure there's much of
anything besides complaining (and I thank you for indulging me here) I can do
about this.
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