More Vanguard Insider Views
It’s a been a while since the Sigil implosion/explosion. Yet, still more insights are coming out of their former employees about what really happened to such a highly anticipated project. Here’s a long post on the Fires of Heavens board by a former designer. Copied here entirely in case of it being lost in the future.
The Blame Game
From the blaming-everything-on-video-games department:
- Supposedly murder because of stupid drunk teenagers imitating Mortal Kombat
- Soda companies blaming video games for child obesity
All I have to say is… /sigh Can we find some other scapegoat? Like D&D, rock and rap music, media violence, internet? Oh wait, those have already been blamed. For all you parents out there, you are supposed to be watching what yours kids are doing. If your 12 years old are playing GTA and get screwed up in the head, you are to blame because you didn’t catch him/her doing so, and provide proper guidance/parenting.
Also, I think the number of accidental gun shot deaths in households is way higher. In 1999, in 3,385 firearms-related deaths for age group 0-19 years, 214 unintentional were unintentional. Pardon my old numbers, I can’t find any newer ones, but with guns more and more common today in US, I can only imagine that number being higher. Let’s fight more worthwhile fights, shall we?
A neat story about how physical therapists at one hospital is using the Wii to engage the patients into doing physical therapy. Just goes to show everyone that, all coins have two sides. Instead of blaming video games for violence in the young and what not, people should instead take responsibility and ask themselves, what they can do to make the most out of the medium, and minimize the negative impact.
New Top Dog: Activition Blizzard
Straight from the press release:
Vivendi to Contribute Vivendi Games Valued at $8.1 Billion, Plus $1.7 Billion in Cash in Exchange for Approximately 52% Stake in Activision Blizzard at Closing; Total Transaction Valued at $18.9 Billion
Activision Blizzard Will Commence Post-Closing Cash Tender Offer for Up to 146.5 Million of its Shares at $27.50 per Share, Representing 31% Premium for Activision Stockholders Based on 20-Trading Day Average
Oh my: Gamespot Employee Spills
Today on video game soup, from gossip like … gossipers department, alleged Gamespot employee weighs in on the recent firing of CNET GameSpot editorial director Jeff Gerstmann, for supposedly giving a low score to a major advertiser’s game.
Believe it or not, make your own conclusion, here’s the comment from Valleywag.com.
This weekend, I decided to try out The Burning Crusade, for various reasons. Most importantly, I wanted to experience their expansion pack free trial process, see if we can learn something from it. It’s less than stellar so far, here’s what I had to go through (read: not pleasant).
Roh-Oh: Animal Crossing MMO on Wii?
Reported by Virtual Worlds News, it’s currently rumored that the Wii incarnation of Animal Crossing would not only be online enabled, but leaning more towards the virtual world model. All signs point to yes so far, and I will be jump on the opportunity to play that. The WiiConnect24 capability is woefully under utilized with the party games craze on Wii. There’s so much potential and so many possibilities, bigger and more than the PC. By design/definition the Wii is way more accessible to the average users than the PC. MySims could have done that, but alas it didn’t.
I do hope though, by then we actually get official Wii keyboard support. Right now it’s unofficial/unannounced and only work in certain places.
Blog Action Day: Environment MMO?
Today is Blog Action Day, an initiative trying to get everyone to write about the same issue today on their blogs. So in observance of that, let’s talk a little bit about that. With the upcoming Metaplace project, it seems it would be quite possible to develop a serious MMO about the environment. The challenge, of course, is how to make it fun. Here are some bullet points of my ideas:
- Overall, a “you can control and change the world” theme, fun would be seeing your actions affecting the world
- Let you play as a meteorologist and study the globe every day
- Let players gather into “regions”, and let them decide on environment measures/ordinances, and then observe what’s the change over time (in an accelerated time line of course)
- Have “bad guys” try to find loop holes in the system and pollute the environment
- Let you be a farmer and experience how climate changes can impact your life
- Let you play as <insert animal> and experience how climate changes impact you
- Let you make choices about your every day life, and give you a report of how you have impacted the environment
That’s just some possibilities, like notes on a napkin. Now, someone go expand and make this because as I wrote the above points I am feeling that I want to play it 