Wonderland

Boing Boing's TF2 server..

.. probably a harbinger of things to come, this: Boing Boing Gadgets tagged a Team Fortress 2 server this past weekend, as Valve was having a play-for-free promotion over the same period.

The new boys at BBG seems to be well into their games; of course, John Brownlee you may remember as Florian from Kotaku, so that makes sense...

Game writers win WGA gongs

The Writers' Guild of America has started to honour videogame writing. Are they late to the game, as it were, or has game writing only recently got good enough to warrant a nod? We'll never know.

The winners are interesting though, if only because the lineup doesn't read like a throwaway, "what were the most popular games this year?" lineup. It looks like the WGA has  done its research, because it includes some unusual titles:

CRASH OF THE TITANS, Written by Christopher Mitchell, Sierra Entertainment

DEAD HEAD FRED, Written by Dave Ellis and Adam Cogan, D3 Publisher

THE SIMPSONS GAME, Lead Writer Matt Selman, Written by Tim Long and Matt Warburton, Dialogue by Jeff Poliquin, Electronic Arts

THE WITCHER, Lead Story Designer Artur Ganszyniec, Dialogue Sebastian Stepien, Additional Dialogue Marcin Blacha, Writers Sande Chen and Anne Toole, Atari

WORLD IN CONFLICT, Story Design Christofer Emgard, Story Consultant Larry Bond, Script Consultant Ed Zuckerman, Sierra Entertainment

Gamasutra says the full list isn't out till February, which is also when we'll be able to see which category these winners are actually in.

ESPN to cover e-sports

I've delicioused this already, but I'm still thinking about it, mainly because it's 2008. Maybe ten years ago, I was in a basement at the Playing Fields off Goodge Street, at a Quake competition. They had a lovely big projection screen area, where spectators could loll about watching the game of the moment. (I got knocked out very early, and didn't mind in the slightest - watching was FUN!)

If it wasn't said to me that day, it certainly was a few times around that period: "one day, this'll be on Sky Sports". Well, it's on ESPN, at least:

ESPN, the self-proclaimed "worldwide leader in sports," is adding video-gaming coverage to its lineup of football, baseball, basketball and other sports programming.

This is also only news because ESPN is The Biggie and they seem to be lumping in e-sports (urg) along with other ordinary sports, rather than sidelining gaming coverage to something like "special events". Only took a decade - but there's no going back now, I'm sure.

Photo from Chapree Da Grande's cc-licensed WCG photos.

Another one to file under "we usually overestimate the speed of change, but underestimate the impact", really.

Also, "OMFG ten years. Sob!".