Daily News Spin — August 3, 2001 (Friday)

Borg Assimilator "suspended"

HomeLAN is reporting that they received word from Activision that Star Trek: Borg Assimilator has been "suspended". This was a game that was being developed by Cyberlore, makers of Majesty, and bore some resemblances to that title in its hands-off style of gameplay. Here's a quote from the message received by HomeLAN from Activision.

After reviewing an early version of the game, it was determined by Activision that the game's design didn't fully match that of the Star Trek universe.

Ouch. We're not sure that "quality first" is the hallmark of the Star Trek universe. Thanks HomeLAN.

Shakeup at theglobe.com

Theglobe.com, parent company of Computer Games magazine, Happy Puppy, and Games Domain Review, is planning on closing down all of its operations except for some gaming operations, according to this Reuters story.

Online media company theglobe.com plans to close its site and fire all but a few employees, pulling the plug on a company whose stock soared a then-record 606 percent in its debut and sparked the dot-com mania, only to became a symbol of Internet-era excess.

The chat and gaming company, once a magnet for finding Internet users with similar personal interests, assembled its roughly 50 remaining staff for an employee meeting at its downtown Manhattan headquarters early on Friday to call it quits.

Employees present at the meeting said company officials told them theglobe.com site would no longer operate after Aug. 15. A handful of employees will be retained by theglobe.com to maintain several separate gaming sites owned by the company.

We have no idea what kind of impact, if any, this will have on the gaming publications mentioned above.

Update: A Yahoo story has a little bit more information. It looks like theglobe.com wants to sell all of its assets, including its gaming properties.

theglobe.com's management team is aggressively seeking business combination or asset sale opportunities for the Company's games information properties, including online content properties Happy Puppy, Kids Domain, Games Domain/Console Domain, Computer Games Online, and Chips & Bits, distributor of games and related products into the retail and wholesale channels, as well as leading print publication Computer Games Magazine. theglobe.com will entertain all bids for these games properties during the next few months.

Here's a key sentence from the story:

The Company is...significantly scaling down its online games operations.

New Battletech miniatures game coming

It's not a computer game, but it's inspired a number of them. Jordan Weisman's Wizkids company is going to put out a new series of collectible, pre-painted miniatures that will be similar to their popular Mage Knights series. Here's an excerpt from the announcement on their webpage, where you can also see some photos of one of the miniatures, the forestry mech.

The new BattleTech will be a collectible, expandable miniatures game. Every plastic �Mech, vehicle, infantry unit, and other figure comes fully assembled and painted. Like a card in a collectible card game (CCG), each model in BattleTech has a unique set of statistics and abilities that make it valuable in battle, so collecting and designing armies is a lot like building decks for a CCG. Unlike a CCG or any other miniatures game, these abilities and statistics change during combat, thus offering a greater depth of play and strategy but a simpler and faster system than other games.

BattleTech has no huge, expensive rulebooks, no endless tables, no paperwork cluttering your game space. The secret to the new game is that each miniature comes attached to its own Combat Dial containing all the figure's statistical information. The Combat Dial does the record keeping for you so you can focus on the battle at hand.

We're intrigued by this. Painting miniatures is a hobby in itself, one we don't have time for. But buying them already painted is another story. And speaking of stories, there's a new Michael Stackpole Battletech story online at the Wizkids site.

New academic game magazine launched

We're doomed, doomed! The academics are moving in. Here's the mission statement for Game Studies, an academic webzine:

Our mission - To explore the rich cultural genre of games; to give scholars a peer-reviewed forum for their ideas and theories; to provide an academic channel for the ongoing discussions on games and gaming. And to scam free games from the game publishers.

Ok, we made up that last part. The 'zine contains articles with headache-inducing stuff like the following:

In Norman Reider's dogmatic but curiously compelling article Chess, Oedipus, and the Mater Dolorosa (1959), the history of chess is examined in a psychoanalytical perspective. Chess has been described as connected to virtue and art of the intellect (the latter is probably the common attitude today) and as a dangerous and idle habit. Chess has been assigned great importance, and its origins has have consequently been the subject of much speculation. The article counts twenty-four legends about the origin of chess, one of which tells of Evil-Merodach who killed his father, after which sages created chess to cure his madness. This is clearly gefundenes Fressen for the Freudian Reider, who mostly in the legends and partly in the game sees the theme of patricide, and proposes:

It may even be argued that the fact that women in general find no fascination in chess is explained in the psychological event that they have no need for father-murder. (p.460)

Dang, Cletus, we wuz just hopin' to read tips on how to blow up the troll that's guarding the +6 Blade of Shaving Cuts. What the hell is this stuff?

It's true, though. We found we were no longer interested in chess after we murdered our fathers. These people are smart!

Thanks to Joystick101.org for the link.

Half-Life to cause rash of security guard murders?

We spotted this link at Blue's. The Australian Security Industry Association is upset with Half-Life, according to the Herald Sun.

Australian Security Industry Association executive director Terry Murphy said he was appalled.

"It's not something the association would like to see, where security guards are being shot and killed for fun in a game," he said.

"These sort of things, they just encourage the wrong sort of behaviour.

"It wouldn't matter if it was a security guard or police officer or any other person that serves the community.

"It's still over the top."

Uh, we think the only thing over the top is their inane reaction to the game. Sheesh.

Ziff going after GameFan name?

IE Magazine is reporting that Ziff Davis is looking to purchase the rights to the GameFan name for a new magazine they want to launch but is having problems finding the person or company that holds the rights to the name.

According to the source, who wished to remain anonymous, Ziff Davis Media is having trouble finding a person with which it can deal to acquire the rights to the GameFan moniker. The existing brand is said to be a good fit for a new game-oriented magazine the company will be introducing, which is expected to be announced later this month. A likely venue for the announcement is next week�s Ziff Davis Media Game Group 5th Annual Game Summit, a gathering of game-industry executives that�s held in Northern California�s Napa Valley.

Napa Valley? Sounds like a wine-drinking boondoggle. Ziff is denying the rumor -- about the name, that is, not the wine drinking.

Computer Gaming World also got awarded some kind of Silver Prize in the 2001 Circulation Management magazine Circulation Excellence Awards. Silver isn't very exciting, we're afraid. We're more impressed by gold, or better yet, a prize named after one of those rare, heavy elements like Isaac Newtonium that can only be made from the intense forces generated in a super collider or LA freeway traffic at rush hour.

Ubi Soft to publish Shadowbane

Take 2 punted on the game, but Ubi's calling for a fair catch. They'll publish and foot the bill for the server farm, it looks like. The press release also noted that the game would be out in the first half of 2002, so expect a June 2002 release.

Game channel coming to your TV

Gamespot has the scoop.

Cable television conglomerate Comcast is reportedly planning to launch a digital cable network dedicated solely to video games. The group behind the project helped form E! Entertainment Television. The channel is reportedly scheduled to launch sometime next year. The channel will be called G4, and Comcast has reportedly agreed to fund it. G4 will target hard-core game players with programming that will preview and review video games.

You want us to watch? We've got one word for you: Naked, buxom hosts wired for electric shocks with the Madcatz Bioforce controller. Ok, so that's more than one word. You get the idea, though.

Hacking the consoles

The Washington Post takes a look at all the non-game development going on with the consoles. Sony's released a Linux development kit for the PS2 and some people are running Linux on the Dreamcast. The Xbox has a lot of people licking their chops too.

"If you can get through the security that Microsoft has in place, I don't see any reason you couldn't use it as a PC," said Brian O'Rourke, an analyst at Cahners In-Stat. "I assume there will be a lot of hackers taking a shot at it. What their chances of success are, I don't know."

"It certainly has been a topic from day one," said Ed Fries, vice president of games publishing at Microsoft, on the subject of hacking the Xbox. "Steps have been taken to make it difficult," he said, declining to go into specifics.

But some doubt that Microsoft will be able to prevent hacking. Cliff Bleszinski, lead designer at Epic Games, predicted that the Xbox will be hacked. "There are going to be a lot of people who are going to hack the thing, wipe the hard drive and install Windows on it," he said.

Because we all know that installing Windows on every kind of device possible is the dream of hackers everywhere. We long for the day when we can install Windows CE on our Fred Flintstone electric toothbrush. Yabba dabba GPF!

Marketing Majestic

The LA Times has an article about Majestic. Here's an interesting paragraph about how they plan on marketing it.

To promote this new brand of neurotic fun, Electronic Arts is launching an $8-million marketing campaign next week. The company is placing men in black suits with cryptic signs on street corners in Los Angeles; New York; Washington, D.C.; and San Francisco. Guerrilla marketers will smear lipstick messages on bathroom mirrors in various nightclubs.

Our rule of thumb is that if we see a guy with a stick of lipstick in the men's john, we do a Snagglepuss. "Exit, sta-age left!"

Strategy titles rule

USA Today takes a look at how strategy games are outselling other genres.

So-called strategy titles, the category that includes life simulations such as The Sims, are taking over the world of computer games. One in every four of the nearly 30 million PC games sold in the first half of 2001 were strategy titles, far outstripping the market share of action (11%) and adventure games (5%), according to NPD Intelect. Industry observers predict that their popularity will help drive the growth in online gaming.

"So-called" is right. There's more strategy involved in boiling noodles than in playing The Sims. There seems to be a companion article as well in USA Today that hops on the Will Wright and Peter Molyneux are brilliant bandwagon.

Future Network up for sale?

The parent company of Imagine Media (PC Gamer) has been talking about looking for a buyer to help with its finances, according to the Guardian Unlimited.

Media analysts named AOL Time Warner, Lagard�re of France, Emap or Mondadori of Italy as possible buyers. Insiders cautioned that no deal is imminent, although yesterday's statement could cause other potential interested parties to emerge.

Directors at Future are understood to be concerned that market conditions will worsen in the coming year, making a restructuring of the company finances more difficult.

Future, which publishes titles including computer games magazine PlayStation 2 and Total Film, was valued at �1bn during the dot.com boom. At yesterday's close it was valued at just �78m.

Wow, they've lost 90% of their market value. The article also states that Future's laid off 490 and closed 20 magazines in an attempt to cut costs.

3am

The archaeologist who discovered the remains of the Pharos lighthouse near Alexandria, Jean-Yves Empereur, has received an apology from Eidos. Seems there's an archaeologist with the same first name in Tomb Raider 4 and the real Jean-Yves was pissed.

GameSpy has a writeup of day one at Gen Con, taking a look at the computer games on display. According to the article both Sierra and Activision cancelled their appearances and other computer game displays were reduced in size.

Gamestop is taking preorders for the Xbox. The cheapest bundle is $600 and includes the Xbox system, an extra controller, DVD remote kit, memory card, an extended warranty and 3 games: Halo, Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee and Dead or Alive 3.

We think we like Max Payne so much because it adheres to the rules of kid physics. Kid physics lets you dodge bullets and when you're near death you can get medicine that cures you instantly, just like in Max Payne. Kid physics also has hot lava as one of its central tenets. In Max Payne there's molten metal, which in kid physics is the same thing as hot lava. Gravity never makes you just "fall," it makes you "fall into hot lava." It takes years to master kid physics too. Two kids might be having a scuffle and one will want to shove the other but kid physics can be invoked to prevent the shove:

"You can't shove me!"

"Why not?"

"I'm on this rock and there's an invisible force field around it!"

"You're right. Dang!"

But you really have to know your kid physics. A little later that same kid will step off the rock to look at a worm or something and the kid will come up to shove him again.

"Hey, you can't shove me!"

"Why not?"

"Uh, because there's an invisible force field around this spot of grass!"

"No there isn't. There's no such thing as a force field around grass."

"You're right. Dang!"

Click here to read Wednesday's news