Gaming News Tidbits for June 27, 2006
It has been a while since our last gaming tidbits post and there has been some interesting news items floating around the web/blog-sphere-thingy. As usual, I will interject my own freaking opinion where needed and give our loyal readers an opportunity to lash back at me. This way we continue to maintain that animosity that is a bastion of the Signal Blogging Network (combine that with the SFSignal copyright on undead time travelling entities and we have a big thing going here folks). Without further ado...
- Giant in the Playground (Order of the Stick comics) and APE Games are delivering a card game!!! Nuff said - go read the press release darned it!!!
- NCSoft has laid off some folks in thier Austin facility. The number is listed at about 70 folks out of a total workforce of 300 or about 23%. The news indicates its mostly QA and Game Master positions that have been eliminated, but does this mean that some of the NCSoft titles are not doing as well as expected? I know that Auto Assault was not a game that I had any desire to continue playing, but Guild Wars still seems to be doing well. I wonder how the other titles (City of Heroes/Villans and others) are doing.
- A partial list of Wii launch titles have been announced. I think its a pretty good list to start with being that there is both a Zelda title and a Metriod title available at launch. This console will probably be one of the first next gen consoles I will pick up.
- Mythic is picked up by Electronic Arts. While I appreciate that this is a good thing for somebody at Mythic, I just can't help but feel a bit sad that it is happening. Honestly, I have always liked the work these guys have done from my time in Dark Age of Camelot, and I wonder what the impact of this will eventually be.
- Used Gaming as a business model is discussed over at Opposable Thumbs on Ars Technica. Its an interesting article in that it really discusses some of the elements of used gaming and how stores like Gamestop/EBGames will take in a game for $5 but then put it on the shelf for $20. I do understand that is how they make thier margins, but its not always such a good deal when you look at the fact that not all games come in thier original box (where do these original boxes go darned it) or instructions - unless you buy from Gamefly.
- Chuck Klosterman of Esquire asks the question about Video Game Critics, and John Scalzi steps up with an answer. I do agree with some of Mr. Scalzi's points (mostly in the arena about most reviewers suck), and I think another issue is critics in other areas have a huge breadth of experience that allow them to really discuss the work within a given framework. Many gamers just do not have that breadth. Both articles are worth a read I think...
- Blizzard is adding paid character transfers to World of Warcraft in the near future. The details are a little slim and are coming out slowly, but soon gamers will be able to jump servers with a bit more ease for a cost of about $25. I think this is a great marketing move for Blizzard and will allow them to continue to maintain thier dominance over the MMO market - sorry that was a total fanboy type comment. Honestly though, the price is at the point where it should prevent server jumpers, but low enough to allow folks to move to a common server with thier friends.
- In game ads can be both a positive thing and at times a negative thing. For the postive end, it allows folks to play games like Anarchy Online for free, but then the downside rears its ugly head and you have to click on an in-game ad to complete a quest. I do understand the need to generate revenue to continue to create content, and honestly there are a few ways to do this. This is the route that AO has chosen to do it, and for many Asian MMOs they use micropayments for items. I am afraid that will be the route some of these games will take. My hope is that for games that integrates ads to help mitigate development costs, that this will not be a common theme. So to clarify, free games with ads - click throughs are somewhat acceptable. Non-free games with ads - click throughs not acceptable at all.
