Archived News:
Ars Technica has a discussion of one of the implications of how activations
of the SecuROM copy protection in Spore are handled, as those who purchase
used copies of the game may find it difficult or impossible to activate the game
without details on the user account of the previous owner. They quote the game's
EULA: "You may not be able to transfer the Software if you have already
exhausted the terms of this License by authenticating the Software on the
allowed number machine [sic]. Subsequent recipients of this License may not be
able to authenticate the Software on additional machines." They analyze the
implications of this, enlisting the Electronic
Frontier Foundation to see whether this limitation was a legal issue,
discussing how similar "end run" moves have been treated in the courts, saying
this is still up in the air: "The law in this area is a bit of a jump ball right
now."
Halflife2.net
has posted the Left 4 Dead system requirements, saying they come straight
from Valve. Word is the multiplayer zombie shooter requires a 3.0 GHz P4, Dual
Core 2.0 or AMD64X2 (or higher) CPU, 1 GB of RAM: (2GB for Vista), and a DirectX
9 compatible video card with at least 256 MB of RAM.
The
Call of Duty: World at War Q&A on GameSpot talks with Cesar Stastny of
Treyarch about the upcoming continuation of the Call of Duty series of
military shooters. Topics include the PC edition, new features, the switch back
to the World War II setting, working with the CoD4 engine, and more. Also,
D+PAD has details on the Call of Duty: World at War Limited Edition for PC
and Xbox 360 that will offer a metal case, a metal canteen, a pre-unlocked FG 42
machine gun, a multiplayer VIP tag, and an "exclusive double-XP week." Thanks
N4G.
Crymod Modding Portal says the Sandbox Editor and mod SDK for Crysis
Warhead and Crysis Wars are in the works, as these tools were not
included in the retail release of Crytek's shooter follow-up. They promise a
release as soon as possible, and in the meantime point out the following for
those interested in new content: "It is possible to play many of the custom
levels that have been created for Crysis Multiplayer in Crysis Wars, so we
encourage everyone to make use of the automatic map downloader and get hold of
some of the great creations from the community and play them on the game
servers."
The Damnation Website now
offers a new movie featuring developer commentary and "work in progress"
gameplay footage highlighting the vertically oriented gameplay in Blue Omega
Entertainment's upcoming steampunk shooter.
A new Need for Speed Undercover trailer looks at gameplay from the next
installment in the long-running racing series. This movie can be found on
AtomicGamer,
ComputerGames.ro,
FileFront, Gamer's Hell,
and
MyGameTrailers.
Kikizo's David Perry Interview is a lengthy conversation with the Shiny
Games founder, discussing his early days as a game developer, cloud gaming,
Flash games, Atari, his current role with Acclaim, his regrets over selling
the Earthworm Jim rights, and more.
The LEGO
Universe Interview on The Vault Network is a video interview with Ryan
Seabury and Mark Hansen, respectively the lead designer and project lead on the
upcoming brixillated MMORPG. The conversation was conducted at the Austin Game
Developers' Conference, and like so many of these convention videos, the audio
quality is bad, in this case enough that it is almost impossible to understand.
The official Cryostasis Website is
online, offering your choice of a Flash or HTML home to this upcoming the
first-person horror game from Ukrainian developer Action Forms. The site offers
information, images, and a link to the game's
official forum.
Finally caught up after Dr. Toothy (pant pant)... I'll put tomorrow's first
update up a little later than usual to give tonight's stories a little breathing
room.
Crusading attorney Jack Thompson will just be crusading citizen Jack Thompson in
a month, as the
Florida Supreme Court has ordered his permanent disbarment, to take effect after
30 days to allow him to close out his practice. Of course it doesn't end there,
as even though the ruling says "the Clerk of this Court is hereby instructed to
reject for filing any future pleadings, petitions, motions, documents, or other
filings submitted by John Bruce Thompson, unless signed by a member in good
standing of The Florida Bar other than himself," Thompson has already defied
that by filing his own emergency motion with the court. He sent this along to
Kotaku,
along with the claim that this action, which has been in the offing for months
( story), is a "rush to disbarment," as "This past Friday Thompson
filed a federal civil rights action against The Bar, the Supreme Court, and all
seven of its Justices. This is in retribution for the filing of that federal
suit. With enemies this foolish, Thompson needs only the loyal friends he has."
Somewhat ironically, it is this sort of vitriol that got him into this trouble
in the first place, as outlined in this portion of the disbarment: "Over a very
extended period of time involving a number of totally unrelated cases and
individuals, [r]espondent has demonstrated a pattern of conduct to strike out
harshly, extensively, repeatedly and willfully to simply try to bring as much
difficulty, distraction and anguish to those he considers in opposition to his
causes. He does not proceed within the guidelines of appropriate professional
behavior, but rather uses other means available to intimidate, harass, or bring
public disrepute to those whom he perceives oppose him."
Thompson first gained notoriety for waging a public battle against rap music
and the group 2 Live Crew before turning his attention to attacking violent
games (and some would say the First Amendment of the US Constitution),
attempting to draw connections over the past several years between a number of school shootings and the
influence of video games.
GamingIndians.com recently had the chance to test-drive Need for Speed:
Undercover at the Games Convention Asia 2008 in Singapore. When they asked
producer John Doyle if there would be a demo of this next installment
in the street racing series, they were told EA is concentrating on development
of the game itself, and there is no plan to release a demo. Thanks Gamer's Hell.
New WHQL-certified version 178.13 ForceWare reference drivers are now available
for NVIDIA GeForce 6, 7, 8, 9, and GTX 200 graphics accelerators, offering
performance and compatibility improvements. There are new drivers for
Windows XP 32-Bit,
Windows XP
64-Bit,
Windows Vista 32-Bit, and
Windows
Vista 64-Bit. Thanks Ant and
FiringSquad.
The September IGDA
Newsletter follows up on a story that originated with complaints from a
developer about not being credited for his contributions to Warhammer Online:
Age of Reckoning ( story). Mythic's initial reaction
questioned the complainant's testicular fortitude ( story), but in
their August
newsletter the International Game Developers
Association called this situation "disrespectful" and that it "misleads
consumers" ( story). The new newsletter has word that Mythic is
looking to redress this issue by putting complete credits for the game online,
and they will also make a "best effort" at putting such credits online for their
previous games. They do, however, maintain that in-manual credits are reserved
for members of the development team when a game ships. Thanks
Broken Toys and
Massively.
GameTap has word that they've added Fallout 2 and Stand O'Food as new
premium games to their online gaming service, and in anticipation of the
imminent release of Fallout 3, they've added the original Fallout as a free
game. Also, following up on yesterday's news that GameTap has partnered with
Metaboli ( story)
Variety.com has a brief Q&A on the move with Metaboli CEO Pierre Gaudet, who
will be in charge of the whole shebang. Word is that Turner basically gave
GameTap to Metaboli in hopes that a sizable minority share in the merged entity
will turn out to be worth more than GameTap is now. He also says going forward
the GameTap/Metaboli partnership will offer more download to own games (he uses
the term "baby iTunes" for games) and more branded partnerships with third
parties, which apparently are a bigger part of Metaboli's business than
subscribers.
Well, as some of you surmised, the feature I teased last night is the
return of customized variants on our logo by the master, 2 of
2 Design. Today our masthead has evolved
to a new intelligent design based on Spore, at least until it goes off and
colonizes other planets. I want to thank 2 from the bottom of my heart for the
return of these logo treatments, the last of which came close to exactly five
years ago.
The Far Cry 2 interview on Play.tm is
an interesting conversation with producer LP Pharand about Ubisoft's upcoming
first-person shooter sequel. They discuss the switch to the African setting,
other changes from the original game, handling AI in an open-world environment,
the moral ambiguity of their game world, and more. He also says they have a few
surprises in their downloadable content plans, saying: it's "going to be really
awesome." He also definitively says there "will be a Far Cry 3" when asked about
a sequel, making it sort of clear that it's uncertain whether this will be a
complete sequel or what he calls "a 2.5 type game," which could come out sooner
with few new features: "Two or four years... I don't know. The
brand is a triple-A shooter, we are, in a way, reinventing the FPS genre. I
expect huge things... Ubisoft expects that. To achieve that takes time. So...
it'll go in one or the other direction... we'll see!"
The
Fallout 3 Q&A on NotesOnGameDev.net talks with Dane Olds, character artist
on Bethesda Softworks' upcoming post-apocalyptic RPG sequel. Topics include his
role in the game's development, the relative scarcity of games with Fallout's
"retro-future" theme, the challenges of creating customizable character content,
inspirations for the game's character art, and a bit more.
The Deep Shadows Website
has a new diary movie from White Gold: War in Paradise the upcoming
first-person shooter set in a Caribbean drug war. The clip, like the site, is in
Russian, but offers a good deal of gameplay footage. The clip is mirrored on
AtomicGamer and
Gamer's Hell.
Okay, so as I mentioned last night, we have the return of a fun feature from the
past today, it will probably go live later this morning. Speaking of fun, I have
that root canal today on this tooth that's bothering me. It's just a one-root
dealie, so it should be a cakewalk for someone who has had as much dentistry as
I have. I sound like I believe it right?
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