Gamers have sat back and received salvo after salvo of anti gaming flack ever since Sub Zero ripped Liu Kang’s spine out when Mortal Kombat hit arcades in 1992. Yet games have prevailed. We have withstood these so called crusaders such as Tipper Gore to Jack Thompson, err Chuckles. You may ask what is the thin line between sanity and chaos? Enter stage right: The ECA.
Anyone who considers themselves a gamer needs to read through this interview. It will open your eyes. Drunk pandas and myself both joined at the Digital Life. 20 dollars a year for a cause that we all care about its an investment in a way. An investment that there will be games in the future. Read on.
At Digital Life this weekend, we got a chance to sit down with Adam Mersky of the development team at Turbine who works on Lord of the Rings Online. We talked about the general aspects of the game as well as new features in the upcoming Book 11 update.
If you’re not familiar with the game, Lord of the Rings Online allows you to immerse yourself in the Tolkien universe as a member of one of the main races in the game. You interact through a storyline that takes place during the Lord of the Rings books. You’ll get to meet up with Frodo, Sam, Aragorn, and even Gandolf. The game is much more about exploration than player vs player combat, unlike many other MMO’s out there.
Adam walked up through the updates in Book 11 and what we can expect from the game in the coming months. The update will bring housing to the game for yourself and your kinship. You’ll be able to settle down in a town with your kinship and create your own house and yard and decorate it to your pleasure. Each player can own one house, but anyone in the world can visit your home. You can give other players permissions to make changes in your house, so don’t be surprised if you come home and find your walls a different color. The options for changing the interior of your house are very simple, and each element can be changed on a room by room basis. You can add many different types of furniture and artwork to each room. If you want to add a stone troll head on your wall as a trophy, it’s there for you to put up. Pricing for housing and different items will be determined in the next few weeks as development wraps up on the update.
We had a chance to sit down with the developers and ask some questions of them as they ran demo to show off the final build, here are some of the highlights:
Everyone wondered if there would be any wifi connectivity?
The answer is no, there will be no transfer of your Sims to anyone else.
Why did they choose not to use Mii’s?
The game was actually put into development back when the Wii was the Revolution and Mii’s didn’t even exist yet, EA also decided they wanted to stick to their own design and brand.
Why move away form the classic Sims look?
They tried to make this game look very much like a Nintendo game and was very influenced by Japanese art style.
You remember those insanely cool Xbox 360 faceplates we posted before? Well, we got a chance to talk with SpaceGhost2K about creating those faceplates, how he comes up with the great ideas, his gaming preferences, and what he thinks of the other current consoles.
drunk pandas: How long does each plate take you to create?
SpaceGhost2K: It depends a lot on the plate. There are multiple steps that each take their own time. Do I need a sticker mask to do the design? Do I have one already or do I have to have one made? Do I have to prepare the art? And then there’s issues with securing action figures or other parts and pieces needed to make the faceplate. Then if you have multiple paint ops, it takes time to dry between ops. I’ts possible to finish a simple plate in a day. There’s others that I’ve been working on a little bit at a time for a couple of months. Right now, I have literally a hundred requests for plates. At one a day, that’s over three months to do them all.
drunk pandas: Where do you get your inspirations for your faceplates?
SpaceGhost2K: I’ve seen an action figure and knew it had to be on a plate. I’ve seen cool kinds of paint, scrapbooking materials, tv shows, even certain fonts have triggered ideas for plates.
In an interview that RedOctane co-founder, Charles Huang, had with CNET he confirmed that their team is working with Nintendo, through some engineering issues in order to get out the new Guitar Hero III game on the DS. Also discussed are a unique peripheral for the GH game on the DS and also a promise of a unique style of play. We are all looking forward to this title on a handheld, should be great.
CNET.com.au: What can you tell us about Guitar Hero III DS?
CH: We are working on that. We’re exploring a lot of things. We’re hoping to really bring the experience to the DS and to do some very, very different approaches. We’re working through a lot of engineering issues with Nintendo. I actually came from a set of meetings with them last week about this. While the technical path hasn’t been set yet, we intend for this to be a very unique experience just like Guitar Hero was on consoles. This will play probably unlike any other DS game that has come out, and at this stage, that’s all I’m afraid we can talk about until we have the engineering paths laid out with Nintendo.
Peter Molyneux has always been outspoken, but this is surprising. In an interview with Kikizo, he says that “most role playing games are shit!” Ummm, right.
He went on to trash Oblivion, one of the highest rated RPG’s of recent past.
Oblivion was a great game, but the combat was rubbish; we all talked about it being rubbish.
Someone needs to slap Peter silly. His idea of great combat for Fable 2 is a single button for all combat moves. He says that consumers actually prefer to mash buttons.
You would think button mashing would be one thing I’d want to get rid of, but I don’t. For some people, it’s what they want to do.
Can I get a double of whatever he’s drinking? For a man who’s so far behind on his game, I don’t think he’s in a place to be calling everyone else out.
At E3, Game Head got a chance to talk to Jack Tretton about losing GTA4 as a PlayStation exclusive. In the interview, Jack revealed that Rockstar would be developing a new, exclusive franchise for the PS3 after Grand Theft Auto 4. Some are speculating this will be LA Noire, but Jack somewhat shot that down.
I guess we’ll have to wait and see what comes of this new exclusive franchise. I hope it’s not more ping pong.
So it begins, two empires come together to conquer all. Microsoft announced today that it will be placing ads into Electronic Arts Inc. sports franchises, starting with Madden 08. Don’t expect to see the ads just be confined to the football title, Microsfot and EA have already confirmed ads for Skate, Tiger Woods, NHL and NASCAR.
It looks like a lot more emphasis will be put on in game ads as Google, Microsoft and others push the nvelope to deliver dynamic ads in our video games. But more importantly what will this all mean to the consumer?
From the article on CNN:
The deal comes as Massive faces increased competition from Google, which bought game ad service Adscape for a reported $23 million in March, and from privately held companies such as Double Fusion.
“We need to build an overall network and this is a major stepping point to have us do that,” Van Arsdale said in an interview with Reuters.
Massive acts as a broker between companies that want to get their ads in front of gamers, and game publishers eager to tap new sources of revenue to offset higher development costs for flashy new titles that can cost $20 million or more to make.
There is a little phrase called “passing the buck” we use here in the greater New York area and this is what Jack Tretton of SCEA is doing. He states, correctly I might add, that Sony has no power or control of what third party gaming companies are putting out and they need to be better to enhance the power of the PS3. Here are some quotes from an interview courtesy of gamerindustrybiz:
“If we have to drive the message on our platform with the games that do that…whether they are first party or third…those are the games we are going to focus on and those are the games the consumers are going to make their purchase decisions on,”
“The message I want to send is, we can’t control what the third parties do,” he explained. “We want to encourage them as much as possible, we want to support them as much as possible…to your point, we want to give them the tools.
“We’re a company that does about 20 plus per cent of our business on first party, so believe me, I don’t want to send the message that we don’t need the third partes. We want to encourage them to maximize their development potential on our platform.
Take it anyway you want, but it seems that Sony is not all too happy with the quality of games that third parties are releasing and its a subtle way of saying, if it sucks, we wont buy it. I, for one, agree with his sentiments. What do you guys think?
We're like Spaceballs... we're making Loot Ninja everything. Coming soon we'll have hats, shirts, hoodies, possibly banana hammocks if one Editor has his way...
Check out the shirt prototypes here and the hats here
We had a chance to sit down with the developers and ask some questions of them as they ran demo to show off the final build, here are some of the highlights:
In an interview that RedOctane co-founder, Charles Huang, had with CNET he confirmed that their team is working with Nintendo, through some engineering issues in order to get out the new Guitar Hero III game on the DS. Also discussed are a unique peripheral for the GH game on the DS and also a promise of a unique style of play. We are all looking forward to this title on a handheld, should be great.
So it begins, two empires come together to conquer all. Microsoft announced today that it will be placing ads into Electronic Arts Inc. sports franchises, starting with Madden 08. Don’t expect to see the ads just be confined to the football title, Microsfot and EA have already confirmed ads for Skate, Tiger Woods, NHL and NASCAR.
There is a little phrase called “passing the buck” we use here in the greater New York area and this is what Jack Tretton of SCEA is doing. He states, correctly I might add, that Sony has no power or control of what third party gaming companies are putting out and they need to be better to enhance the power of the PS3. Here are some quotes from an interview courtesy of gamerindustrybiz:
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