Computer
and Video Games offers the promised (
story) first detail on
Deus Ex 3, as the shooter/RPG sequel is previewed in the 200th issue of
print magazine PC Zone, which has begun reaching subscribers in advance of its
release on newsstands this Thursday. The game is under construction at Eidos
Montreal with Deus Ex writer Sheldon Pacotti consulting on the project, and
while Harvey Smith and Warren Spector are not involved, word is it has their
"blessing." According to the article, Eidos Montreal is aware of complaints
about
Deus Ex: Invisible War, promising to redress "mistakes" like ammo
type limitations. On the other hand, changes are described that further depart
from Deus Ex canon, and make the project sound more like
Gears of War, including combat relying more on player aim than stats, a cover system for
stealth (rather than skulking in shadows), and an auto-healing system for
damage. Thanks Jonas.
The
Dynasty Warriors 6 Website
now offers a playable demo for the PC edition of
Dynasty Warriors 6, the
latest installment in Koei's hack-and-slash action series. The website also
offers a system checker to see how well your system can handle the demo, which
is a 321 MB download, which is mirrored on
ComputerGames.ro and
Gamer's Hell.
Another unofficial patch for
Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines updates
the source-engine action/RPG from defunct developer Troika to version 5.7. The
download can be found on the official home of these unofficial updates,
The Patches
Scrolls.
MTV Multiplayer has a Q&A with SOE president John Smedley about the future
of massively multiplayer online gaming. On the subject of expanding the reach of
the MMO scene, they discuss genres other than RPGs, attracting more female players,
and MMOGs on consoles, with Smedley saying all SOE's future MMOGs will also
appear on consoles. He is less certain about the business model they will settle
on for this, saying it's possible this will be an area where the
subscription-free model will be the norm. He also discusses efforts at expanding
MMOGs onto handheld devices. Thanks Verno.
Gaming news and PR- can one man run both at the same time? This is a
question raised on Ars Technica based on some investigation of gaming site
GameCyte by
Joystick Division that uncovered what may constitute conflicts of interest.
It turns out that GameCyte is owned by the same individual who owns
TriplePoint, a public relations firm
that works with, yup, the game industry. Former and current employees of the PR
side also operate as "journalists" on the gaming site, and their gaming coverage
has includes current PR clients like EA and Nyko and former client Telltale
Games, a company in which TriplePoint owner Richard Kain is an investor.
Joystick Division interviews Kain, who both acknowledges the appearance, and
denies the existence, of conflict of interest, defends this situation by citing
other cases that could be considered conflicts as well. As a result of these
investigations, GameCyte now offers better disclosure of these potential
conflicts. The question of how much potential conflict of interest is acceptable
in the world of gaming news coverage is an interesting one as more big players
get involved, for example, MTV now develops games and has a gaming blog and
Fox owns both IGN and GameSpy, two sites that review games that use GameSpy
middleware and are sold via IGN's Direct2Drive. This is a serious topic around
here: When loonyboi first joined on back in the old days to make this a site
with a staff, we established a firm policy prohibiting anyone here from being an
investor in any game-related stocks.
Giving Credit Where Credit Is Due on Gamasutra solicits comments from
Mythic's Mark Jacobs, the IGDA, Valve's Doug Lombardi and others about issues
surrounding properly crediting game developers that recently boiled over into a
bit of controversy surrounding the credits in Warhammer Online
(
story,
story, and
story). Topics
include aspects of game development that complicate the crediting process, and
the possibility a standard for game credits could be adopted, which doesn't
sound likely from the responses they receive.
Okay, it turns out the glitch with font sizes folks were experiencing here that I
mentioned yesterday was not on the server end, but rather the client end. If you
have a problem with giant fonts on the headlines, please try a forced refresh of
your browser (control-F5, I believe). So far anyone experiencing this has found
this simple step has solved their problem.
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