For those that don't know Infinium Labs is a running joke in the gaming world. Started by a guy named Bachus it was initially supposed to produce a next-gen gaming console appropriately named "Phantom" Nearly 5 years later this is what they came up with so far. 5 years and we get a keyboard on a hopped up lazy susan? Who the fuck is still giving this clown money? The folks running this company already have several ruined companies and t...
Just a quick followup to this article I wrote a while back concerning World of Warcraft and kids playing it unsupervised. PWOT has posted the following video of a WoW "gay bar" . While I personally find the whole thing hilarious it is indicative of the sort of thing that goes on on WoW servers from time to time that many parents simply would never have thought about since WoW is just a game to them. I laughed my ass off though. ...
Penny Arcade's Tycho Brahe has a brief take on the ongoing GalCiv2 Beta and his views on the future including a brief thought regarding Stardock's philosophy that I found to be dead on with my own opinion of Brad and his crew... Excerpts for the linkistically challenged: "GalCiv2 is, I think it accurate to say, en route to being the definitive star empire simulator." .. "Stardock is focused on making a full-fat, no excuses, ho...
I can picture it now... you load the code into the compiler, hit compile, go get a beer and a jagerschnitzel, come back and release an updated version of ADOM! The world would rejoice. At least update the bloody page Thomas! Grr...
I previously wrote this article regarding my concern about kids playing World of Warcraft unsupervised. After nearly 19,000 unique hits it ranks as my most widely read article to date. The debate in the commentary was fierce as people who have never read my blog assumed that since I had dared to write anything that didn't reflect gaming in a saintly light that I was in fact some sort of homebrew Jack Thompson-esque game hater. I thought...
Over the last few days many of you have felt the need to weigh in on my articles on World of Warcraft and other gaming issues. Show me that you can wiegh in on something a bit more meaty like children's charity. Penny Arcade's Child's Play is spinning up again. Go donate. Or just wait until I write another gaming article and spend your energy on that you selfish bastards. No pressure.
I would like you to meet two friends of mine : Thomas and Dane. Different guys living in different parts of the country. Let me tell you about Thomas first ok? Thomas started from almost nothing and worked his ass off to get where he is today. Homeless and alone he struggled as an orphan in a hostile and uncaring place. The only thi...
*inspired by this article For those of you who are unfamiliar with the terms used here lets start with MMORPG. That acronym stands for Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. These games are played remotely by millions of players every day. Some of the examples include Everquest (EQ or EverCrack), Ultima Online (UO), and most recently World of Warcraft (WoW). There are others of course and they all vary in terms of game mechanics, scope, and milieu but they ...
Look Galciv2 Beta 4 just came out Thursday night. Already tons of bug reports and feature suggestions have been posted on the forums with answers direct from the devs! My god there are game companies out there who will go months to years without showing their faces on their own forums! (I'm looking at you, Atari, THQ, Relic, and Microprose!). Not only are the devs responding but they have already relased a new build! Thats why Brad and ...
Fanboys and girls it is time to start your Betas! Galciv2 Beta 4 is out! Feel free to leave your commentary on it's lusciousness. I am downloading mine now... *Update V2.0 : Galciv2 now functioning. They fixed the install. *update : Spoke a bit too soon I guess.. the version now available through Stardock Central appears to be corrupt. My error log is in the commentary now.
Just drooling over some Xbox 360 specs and such here when I noticed this strange footnote : *Free Silver membership requires a broadband Internet connection and an Xbox 360 storage device (hard drive or memory unit). Korean players under the age of 14 and players who have previously been banned from Xbox Live are ineligible. Odd that it is just Koreans under age 14 who are banned. What bizarre incident did I miss here? Chiprj probably knows... If you k...
A follow-up to Amitty's article ... A few days ago I posted this bit regarding the start of an email exchange between anti-violent video game zealot Jack Thompson and the creators of Penny Arcade. Well Jack has escalated this by sending a very misleading letter to the Seatle PD trying to have the PA guys arrested (for god knows what). I have taken the liberty of reproducing the letter PA posted since they are having server issues right now. This ...
This is an email I wrote to anti-violent video game "crusader" Jack Thompson ( jackpeace@comcast.net ) after reading about an exchange between Jack and Penny Arcade's Mike Krahulik (Gabe): Mr. Thompson, I find it humorous that gamers have overwhelmed your offering of $10,000 to produce a video game annually with www.childsplaycharity.org . Frankly I think your 10K offer is quite paltry and also fairly disingenous. Truly you are a strange, small, and helpless ...
I got the expansion pack for Warhammer 40K : Winter Assault a few days ago and have yet to able to use the damn thing. I am not alone in this as many gamers who purchased this pack have the exact same issue. This is a great example of how copy protection schemes can backfire on a developer. THQ/Relic were so concerned that people would pirate their expansion pack (made alomst entirely from independant modders work and simply repackaged neatly BTW), that they apparently h...
NextGen has a great interview with Greg Costikyan about the future of software and game development/distobution. A little Stardock-plugging excerpt: I think we will launch with a hundred or more titles. I'm not relying solely on broadly populist products although we will certainly be carrying those. We'll also be looking at, for example, war games where there is a consumer following but which rarely has much in the way of retail distribution any more. For example, companies ...