IncGamers has word that Blizzard Entertainment has secured the rights to
Redneck Rampage, Xatrix Entertainment's Build-engine hillbilly shooter
released in 1997, and that Blizzard now owns the trademarks for all three titles
in the series, Redneck Rampage,
Redneck Rampage Rides Again, and
Redneck Rampage Suckin' Grits on Route 66. Xatrix eventually became Gray
Matter Interactive and was acquired by Activision in 2002 and eventually merged
into Treyarch, but the rights did not belong to Activision Blizzard before now,
as they were sold off to Vivendi in 2004. Blizzard
recently
indicated they have a fifth game in development, and while a campy shooter
may not seem to be their sort of project, Incgamers notes that several
developers at Blizzard actually worked on the Redneck Rampage games back in the
day.
The
Nexuiz Website now offers
a new version 2.5 of this open-source freeware first-person shooter.
This page offers a complete list of new features and changes, including a
new "race" mode, new weapons, a redone HUD, and more. Thanks Jerry.
Citing "sources,"
Kotaku reports the
Mortal Kombat team is looking for a publisher to
help them start a new studio, rater than waiting for their fate as Midway looks to
sell the Mortal Kombat franchise. According to the report, the
team is currently operating without a contract, leaving them in the position to
pursue such a deal. Unfortunately Midway's bonus deal for selling off its
franchises was
just revised, so they can't earn a bonus from
Midway for brokering a deal that would include the IP for the fighting game.
An April Fools' movie for
Red Faction: Guerilla (available on
GameTrailers) showed
off a gag weapon called the "Ostrich Hammer." Now
Red Faction Underground
(thanks
Shacknews) has
word that inspired by the response to the gag, Volition has decided to include
an Ostrich Hammer in the game as an unlockable multiplayer item. Word is: "As
you can see from the screenshots above (and our quick MS Paint mashup from the
video), the Ostrich hammer will be available as a Multiplayer unlockable when
the game ships in June! This isn’t all though, because over the next few weeks,
we’re going to have a ton of new information here about multiplayer including
more hammer unlocks, new modes, the amount of changes we made based on your
feedback during the MP beta (A LOT), and a few other MP surprises. So stay tuned
and keep checking back for more or we’ll have to ostrichcize you!"
Ragdoll Metaphysics: Introversion on Mathematical Cities, Gaming the Pirates &
the Redemption of Programmer Art on Offworld is an interview with
Introversion's Chris Delay (described as "last of the bedroom developers") about
the aforementioned topics, and more, going into specifics about
Darwinia,
Uplink,
Defcon,
Multiwinia, and their upcoming project,
Subversion.
IGN explains the
alternating indications that
BioShock 2 would,
would not, or
might carry a subtitle of "Sea of
Dreams." The ultimate answer is it will not, and the explanation is that "Sea of
Dreams" was the title of the teaser movie where it appeared, and they briefly
toyed with the idea of using it as a subtitle after folks started talking about
it, but ultimately decided against it.
StarcraftWire.net is giving away one of their "very precious BlizzCon Beta
Keys" for
StarCraft II, though this does not come with the Bear mount for
WoW. They have also posted some
secret pre-beta info from Battle.net that some enterprising individual
uncovered.
Play This Thing! - Mothers, Don't Let Your Children Grow Up to Be Game
Developers. Thanks
Boing Boing.
"Mike Capps, head of Epic, and a former member of the board of directors
of the International Game Developers Association, during the IGDA Leadership
Forum in late 08, spoke at a panel entitled Studio Heads on the Hot Seat, in
which, among other things, he claimed that working 60+ hours was expected at
Epic, that they purposefully hired people they anticipated would work those
kinds of hours, that this had nothing to do with exploitation of talent by
management but was instead a part of 'corporate culture,' and implied that
the idea that people would work a mere 40 hours was kind of absurd."
VG Chartz.com -
Analysis Of Onlive's Claims On Performance.
"Comparing this with Mr. Perlman's claims of 35-80 ms response time, this
makes Onlive's claimed performance look either exceptional or unbelievable
(depending on your perspective). For me, it is very hard to believe that a
game running on a local console can have the same or higher response time
than achieved with the same game running on a remote computer streamed
through an Internet connection from potentially hundreds of kilometers (and
several Internet router hops) away."
The
Alganon Website has
a new movie introducing Asheran, offering "a brief tour of the capital and major
trading port of Ardonya." The clip is mirrored on
AtomicGamer and
Gamer's Hell.
Apologies about the non-update last night. I've managed to do some spacey things
over the years, but last night is the first time I can recall posting a bunch of
stories to the server and then failing to publish them to the main page, so I
guess my senility is getting worse. Sorry about that.
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