Final Fantasy XIII Video Preview
Randolph Ramsay answers some questions from the Gamespot community about highly anticipated JRPG Final Fantasy XIII in Gamespot AU’S Questionarium. Read more from the original source: Final Fantasy XIII Video Preview
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Final Fantasy XIII Video Preview
UFC Undisputed 2010 Video Interview with Neven Dravinski and Rob Pearsall
Gamespot AU sit down on the couch with UFC 2010 producers Neven and Rob, and chat about the success of the first game and what’s new in 2010, including techniques, fighting styles, and fight camps. View post: UFC Undisputed 2010 Video Interview with Neven Dravinski and Rob Pearsall
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UFC Undisputed 2010 Video Interview with Neven Dravinski and Rob Pearsall
Natal Marketing Effort Targeting Women’s Magazines [Project Natal]
You know those women’s magazines like Glamour and Cosmopolitan that promise BIG SEX NEWS every single month? Well, if a report’s to be believed, they’re going to be delivering BIG NATAL NEWS as the product nears release. MCV reports that Microsoft’s ramping up marketing plans for Natal that go after Nintendo’s top-of-mind awareness in nontraditional games niches. Celebrity endorsements will be a factor of a campaign that targets “the parenting press, toy retailers and publications which primarily cater for non-gamers.” That would include Vogue and all those magazines with hot unattainable women you pretend not to notice when you’re buying Hot Pockets at the Safeway. MCV said Microsoft invited “an elite selection of media” and other non-games firms to a VIP showcase to talk about Natal. Presumably, these were the types of magazines invited. I can’t wait until Glamour starts telling us about that secret thing Milo wishes we would do, but is too afraid to ask. Microsoft Turns to Celebs for Natal [MCVUK] Read more from the original source: Natal Marketing Effort Targeting Women’s Magazines [Project Natal]
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Natal Marketing Effort Targeting Women’s Magazines [Project Natal]
Mario 1Up Quilt, as Made by a Dude [Screengrab]
Two years ago, longtime reader Jacob C. was expecting his first child, a daughter. “I wanted her to have a handmade video game quilt, unrivaled in awesomeness as only they can be.” Problem is, neither he nor his wife quilted. Jacob enlisted the help of four female friends (“Maija, Grace, Rebecca, and especially Carol) to guide his project. The mushroom theme was chosen because of its status as the ultimate 8-bit video game blessing. It took a long time, but it is his daughter’s two-year-old birthday present. So congratulations and happy birthday. Quilting might not be considered a manful art, but if you flip the premise and call this a blanket mod then I suppose we’re on the right track. Anyhow, if games aren’t just for boys, then game crafts aren’t just for girls. So man up and get sewin’. You can see more pictures at his Picasa album. More: Mario 1Up Quilt, as Made by a Dude [Screengrab]
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Mario 1Up Quilt, as Made by a Dude [Screengrab]
Week in Games: Baseball’s Back [New Releases]
Pitchers and catchers reported last week. One week later we have opening day on the consoles, as MLB 2K10 and MLB 10 the Show release on Tuesday. Oh yeah, Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is also out. This week’s count: Eleven for PC, 10 for Wii, nine for DS, six for PSP, five for Xbox 360, three for PS3 and two for PS2. Sunday (Feb. 28) Aztec Treasure Hunt (DS) City Builder (Wii) Crazy Garage (DS, PC, Wii) Dust Devils (360) Ella’s Hope (PC) Gunbird 2 Remix (PSP) Halfbrick Rocket Racing (PSP) House M.D. (PC) Hubert the Teddy Bear: Winter Games (Wii) Hunted (PC) Party Designer (DS) Royal Envoy (PC) Theatre of War II – Kursk 1943 (PC) Zooloretto (Wii) Monday (March 1) Alganon (PC) Build-a-Bear Workshop: Friendship Valley (Wii, DS) Dante’s Inferno (PSP) Mega Man 10 (Wii) Tuesday (March 2) Alice in Wonderland (DS, Wii) Battle of Giants: Mutant Insects (DS) Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (PC, PS3, 360) Foto Showdown (DS) Lips: Party Classics (360) Lunar: Silver Star Harmony (PSP) Major League Baseball 2K10 (PS2, PS3, PSP, Wii, 360) MLB 10: The Show (PS2, PS3, PSP) Project Runway (Wii) Silent Hunter V: Battle of the Atlantic (PC) Sonic Classic Collection (DS) SpongeBob’s Boating Bash (DS, Wii) Supreme Commander 2 (PC) Wednesday (May 3) Clover: A Curious Tale (PC) Toy Soldiers (360) See the article here: Week in Games: Baseball’s Back [New Releases]
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Week in Games: Baseball’s Back [New Releases]
Activision Terminates Fan-Made King’s Quest Extension [King's Quest]
The team of King’s Quest enthusiasts who had, since 2002, been working on an unofficial continuation of the seminal adventure game, have complied with a demand by Activision to cease all development of their game. The Silver Lining has a long and unusual history, even for fan-built games. The final official installment of King’s Quest came in 1998 . Two years later, enthusiasts started their first attempt at coding their own sequel, starting over with the current development volunteers, Phoenix Online Studios, in 2002. From the beginning, the team asserted a right to the project under U.S. fair use copyright law. In 2005, Phoenix Online survived its first cease-and-desist order from the rights holder at the time, Vivendi Universal. Outcry and backlash over the project’s termination led to an extraordinary non-commercial “fan license” granted for The Silver Lining . However, Sierra’s intellectual property has since changed hands from Vivendi to Activision. And Activision is not interested in continuing this license or crafting another non-commercial agreement. Says the developers: After talks and negotiations in the last few months between ourselves and Activision, they have reached the decision that they are not interested in granting a non-commercial license to The Silver Lining , and have asked that we cease production and take down all related materials on our website. As before, we must and will comply with this decision, as much as we may wish we could do otherwise. We cannot say enough how much we appreciate the support we have had over these years from our fans. Without you, we would never have gotten this far. There would be no game to develop, and no one to develop it for. You have been amazing and steadfast, and we will always remember that and appreciate it more than we can say. Sadly, after eight years of dedicated work and even more dedicated fans, The Silver Lining project is closing down. What’s more, the C&D requires closure of most of the forums set up to support the project’s development. Phoenix Online says it is building a new, empty forum so fans brought together by the project can stay in touch. The Silver Lining [site] See the rest here: Activision Terminates Fan-Made King’s Quest Extension [King's Quest]
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Activision Terminates Fan-Made King’s Quest Extension [King's Quest]
Heavy Rain Film Rights Optioned Long Ago [Hollywood]
Heavy Rain was announced way, way back at E3 2006, which was the week of May 8. One week after the show, May 15, 2006, the U.S. Copyright Office recorded an option for the film rights to the game. The option, re-filed in 2007, is between Quantic Dream chief David de Gruttola and New Line Productions. By itself it doesn’t mean Heavy Rain is coming to a theater near you soon. Short form options are simply a notice that the rights to produce an adapted work have already been granted. It’s largely a procedural matter, one that sets for the record who owns what rights. But it’s fascinating to see that, so shortly after the game went public, Quantic Dream had a Hollywood option for the game. It means they were either in talks well before this, or there are (or were) Hollywood types roaming E3 with orders to snap up rights to promising-looking games. Hollywood has tons of money, and options are often bought up as a hedge, comparatively cheaply, very early in a work’s life cycle. Because they get hellaciously expensive when they get popular. So the latter scenario’s somewhat plausible, too. via Superannuation Link: Heavy Rain Film Rights Optioned Long Ago [Hollywood]
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Heavy Rain Film Rights Optioned Long Ago [Hollywood]
Indoctrinating the Veterans of a Virtual War [Weekend Reader]
In the past year, 70,000 men and women enlisted in the U.S. Army. Sixty-seven times that amount – 4.7 million – played Modern Warfare 2 on a console or PC, released one day before Veteran’s Day. In the latest edition of Foreign Policy, P.W. Singer examines the growing phenomenon of “militainment,” a type of game content that draws praise from actual soldiers and officers as much as it gives them pause in its simplification of a deadly job, and bloodless lack of consequence. The article is an objective treatment of the subject, spending much of its time describing the history of the genre and the surge in the military’s budgeting for computer simulation training. It has an obvious benefit, one top commanders believe in: “Combat veterans live longer,” said Col. Matthew Caffrey, a professor of war gaming and planning at the Air Command and Staff College. “One reason we use war games is to make virtual vets.” But demonstrators who object to recruiters using video games to lure teens aren’t the only ones troubled by the simulations’ reduced presentation of war. It’s possible that, in the transition from militainment and game training to live fire with consequences, we can see the age-old argument about violence and desensitization writ large. Managing that, and managing young soldiers’ expectations of what they will face and its aftermath, must become a priority. Because it’s clear that military games are here for good. Meet the Sims … and Shoot Them [Foreign Policy, March/April 2010] Not everything about militainment is controversial: Who is going to complain, after all, about trying to find a better way to save soldiers’ lives, help trauma victims, or prevent sexual harassment? And as Maj. Gen. John Custer told Training & Simulation Journal, the world has changed: “You have to realize what generation you’re trying to teach. You know what? PowerPoint is not the way to go.” But there are many concerns about what these dramatic changes mean for war’s future. With only so many hours in the day, some in the military worry that video games are beginning to edge out real-world training. Navy Capt. Stephen David complained in the service’s in-house journal that the virtual vets arriving aboard his ship lacked “the requisite familiarity with even the most basic shiphandling skills.” Others raise what is called the “O’Brien Effect,” referring to the time talk-show host Conan O’Brien challenged tennis champion Serena Williams to a match, only to defeat her on the Nintendo Wii. At some point, piloting a plane in combat is different from piloting a computer workstation, just as hitting a real tennis ball is not the same as hitting the Wii version. The real danger of militainment, though, might be in how it risks changing the perceptions of war. “You lose an avatar; just reboot the game,” is how Ken Robinson, the Special Forces veteran who produced Army 360, put it in Training & Simulation Journal. “In real life, you lose your guy; you’ve lost your guy. And then you’ve got to bury him, and then you’ve got to call his wife.” This is not just an issue for the military, but also for a broader public that has less and less to do with actual war. As Celeste Zappala of Philadelphia, a mother who lost her son in Iraq, told Salon, “I’ve always believed when people participate in virtual violence, it makes the victims of violence become less empathetic and less real, and people become immune to the real pain people suffer.” But for most parents, having to send their children to war is not something they worry about, even as it becomes something that more of them play at. At the same time, the nexus of video gaming, war, and militainment is growing even fuzzier with the rapid growth in unmanned systems that use video-gaming technology to conduct actual military operations (the United States now has some 7,000 unmanned systems in its aerial inventory and another 12,000 on the ground). Indeed, the executive at robot-maker Foster-Miller worries that it is becoming too fuzzy. “It’s a Nintendo issue,” he told me. “You get kids used to playing Grand Theft Auto moving on to armed robots. Are you going to feel guilt after killing someone?” With more and more soldiers sitting at a robot’s computer controls, experiencing no real danger other than carpal tunnel syndrome, the experience of war is not merely distanced from risk, but now fully disconnected from it. One Air Force officer speaking to Wired’s Noah Shachtman about his experiences in the Iraq war, which he fought from a cubicle hundreds of miles away, described the feeling: “It’s like a video game…. It can get a little bloodthirsty. But it’s fucking cool.” A commander of a Predator drone squadron based in Nevada probably best summed up to me the quandaries, for both the military and the public. A former F-15 pilot, the officer described the new generation of unmanned systems operators with awe. Years of video gaming had made them “naturals” in the fast-moving, multitasking skills required for modern warfare. But there was also a cost. “The video-game generation is worse at distorting the reality of it [war] from the virtual nature. They don’t have that sense of what’s really going on,” he told me. This might be the essence of this new era of militainment: a greater fidelity to detail, but perhaps a greater distortion in the end. Every day, this officer heads off to virtual war. But when he comes home, he doesn’t let his own children play the many war games aimed at them. “We do the car ones instead.” – P.W. Singer Weekend Reader is Kotaku’s look at the critical thinking in, and of video games. It appears Sundays at noon. Please take the time to read the full article cited before getting involved in the debate here. See original here: Indoctrinating the Veterans of a Virtual War [Weekend Reader]
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Indoctrinating the Veterans of a Virtual War [Weekend Reader]
Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: Next-Gen Cereal System Edition [Photoshop]
Last week a box of 22-year-old cereal sold for more than $200 on eBay . Video game cereals died in the 8-bit era. Since then there have been four console generations – and zero cereal systems. That’s where you come in. This week’s assignment: Create a game-themed cereal box whose crossover is just as cynical, whose contents are half as nutritious, and whose lifespan would be even shorter-lived than the Nintendo Cereal System of 1988. Considering the hundreds of games we’ve seen since then, this is the most open-ended ‘Shop Contest topic to date. But don’t be limited by that timeframe. If you want to do some Frosted Mini-Fairchild Channel F Wheats, have at it. Your source material is basically infinite, but here is a very good site to get you started: Cereal Box Covers at Cover Browser There are some 850 cereal box covers spanning the history of 20th century breakfast at that link. I am honestly expecting no fewer that four dozen Team Fortress 2 submissions, and at least one Peter Jackson’s King Kong: The Official Cereal of the Official Game of the Movie. Get cracking! We’ll round up the 20 best next week. Note: Image dimensions cannot be larger than 800 pixels tall and 1200 pixels wide. Thanks. Read this article: Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: Next-Gen Cereal System Edition [Photoshop]
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Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: Next-Gen Cereal System Edition [Photoshop]
Final Fantasy XI to Get Three Expansions in 2010 [Final Fantasy XI]
At Vanafest 2010 in Tokyo, Hiromichi Tanaka, the lead developer of Final Fantasy XI , announced that game will get three new high level battle area additions this year: Vision of Abyssea, Scars of Abyssea, and Heroes of Abyssea. Vision of Abyssea will be the first release, this summer. The other two are not yet dated. All will cost $9.99 and will require the previous expansion packs Wings of the Goddess and Rise of the Zilart. An official page for the add-ons has also been launched but there’s nothing much on it beyond a splash page. The Vanafest page has more details. [thanks to Stephen for the heads-up] Read more from the original source: Final Fantasy XI to Get Three Expansions in 2010 [Final Fantasy XI]
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Final Fantasy XI to Get Three Expansions in 2010 [Final Fantasy XI]