Wonderland

On holiday

Gone to Cuba! Back in two weeks: no monitor glow moontan for me any more, it's 35 degrees and flaming coconuts all the way. w00t!

x

Data retention is no solution

If you believe it, sign it.

More zombies

The slightly more 3D kind this time in Dead Rising:

I saw this briefly at TGS, and it's more BatMan than Resident Evil - almost spritey looking, y'know? - and also, really really gory, in a rather bright-red carmageddon kind of way.

It's good timing, I need more zombies in my life now that I'm totally stuck in Resi 4 (can't get past the cowboy-hat marine dude in chapter 7 or so).

A girl can't have enough zombies.

Urban Dead

Had a go yet? Jay's got a post on it at the moment, and the most startling thing that jumped out is the number of players - for a text based adventure game that looks like this:

... it's got 92,000 players! That's really quite an achievement. I'm in there.

Action points, by  the way, also include walking, so don't do what I did and run up to the nearest zombie, use up all your action points on him, then realise you're stuck - out in the open, for the next 24 hours - with a not-dead undead in front of you.

I expect not to wake up from this.

Tum te tum

98% formatted...

Black & White 2

Is gold, but you knew that. Ron Millar and Peter Molyneux (two uber designers; gosh there's a lot riding on this game) are going to be demoing the game on launch day, somewhere in Oxford Street, London. October 7th.

I'll be on holiday on that day (this holiday is turning out to be a royal pain, I'm having to miss the State of Play do in NYC, and now this! Still, it'll be flaming coconuts on a Cuban beach in hurricane debris, who am I to complain..) - bugger. I wonder if anyone'll turn up with a big plushie on a leash.

Mario & Luigi realistically drawn

Er..

Noooooo!

Games and politics..

American McGee's talking to Idle Thumbs about Bad Day LA. There's a pic of him up too - I always pictured him as looking like Marine in Quake, or maybe Sarge in QIIIA. In fact he looks a bit like Morrissey.

"I felt an overwhelming urge to do something about this issue," American said in an interview with IGN in June. "If I were a film director or a political blog writer, I would have been inspired to go off and make a movie or write an article... But seeing as how I make video games for a living, I felt that I had to find a way to inject this ageless message into a game: We have nothing to fear but fear itself."

And on story:

Bad Day LA consists of a story made up of 25,000 words. This is basically the size of a large screenplay or a novel. The story plays a very critical role in the overall game experience. The core of the story revolves around the idea of fear and how we're not very well served by it. In fact, the main character, by virtue of his homelessness, and his being disconnected from normal society, is a fearless character. This is what makes him an interesting hero.

A good read. I like those Idle Thumbs chaps, although they have the vacuous-sounding Lisa Foster as their quote of the moment, which is a slightly shameful thing.

Mark Rein: more $ please

Mark Rein, he of Epic, is being quoted all over at the moment from a variety of interviews he's been doing. He's got a bee in his bonnet about second hand sales, and how the game originator should have a cut from any such sales, because they don't get paid enough already.

If you walk into EB in the US, they try and sell you a second hand version of a game before a new one. I think that's bad.

I doubt the customer thinks it's bad.. 

It would be fine if they share that revenue with us. They can also be marketing partners with us as well. We can have an official refurbished games policy. That's the problem. Those resold games use server resources, tech support. The majority of guys calling up saying "I don't have my serial number", I'm sure a lot of those are resold. It costs us money. Those customers think they paid for it, and they're entitled to support. The reality is, we didn't get paid. They didn't pay us.

If Person A sells their game to Person B, then Person A no longer needs support for that game and Person B does. A simple swap-out. No net result on any tech support lines or whatnot, strange man.

He did this same rant at Edinburgh this year, asking for a cut of any second hand sales, and calling for the banning of game rentals. Banning rentals! Quite amazing. Also, he looks exactly like that bloke from Spin City.

Mark Rein:

... that bloke:

Keybag

Look, I *have* to have one of these. OK?

(Merci Jesse!)