Dean Takahashi of the San Jose Mercury News revealed that people can take advantage of a known QuickTime problem and become virtual pickpockets in Linden Lab’s Second Life. Steve over at PlayNoEvil points out that “anything can that actually affect the integrity of the game or business application should be completely independent of these services to ensure that a breach in ‘the other guy’s stuff’ doesn’t affect the security of your business – especially casual applications and services that do not see themselves as having security functionality.” Linden Labs confirmed the vulnerability, but the researchers who exploited the flaw were quick to note the issue can be resolved with a simple patch. Still – I think Steve’s got a point:
Rich Taylor, a former senior exec with the Motion Picture Association of America and aide to Congressman Jim Chapman (D-Tx), has signed on as the new senior vice president for communications and research at the Entertainment Software Association.
Combing experience in both politics and with the MPAA, under famed founder and former president Jack Valenti, it sounds like Taylor is quite a catch for the ESA.
“The ESA and the video game industry are very lucky to have Rich aboard,” said Michael D. Gallagher, CEO of the ESA, which represents U.S. computer and video game publishers. “Rich’s expertise and extensive experience in communications are a perfect match for the investment, innovation, and creativity of the video game industry.”
Taylor is replacing Carolyn Rauch who quit the ESA, where among other things she organized E3, to join the IDG, where among other things she organized the E4All Show. It’s not clear yet if Taylor will have any hand in the new and evolving E3.
We mentioned Kokoromi’s Gamma 256 event a while back, run during the Montreal International Games Festival. Ian Bogost (over at Water Cooler Games) gave a nod to one of the game entries for the contest (which encouraged the smallest/most irregular aspect ratio, with the caveat that resolution could not exceed 256 x 256) called Passage, a sweet memento mori game that’s one of those loose, free, and arty little diversions. There are Mac, WIndows, and Linux versions over the the Passage site, and even a note from Jason Rohrer to read after you play the game. It’s a weird little game, but sweet, and worth spending a couple of minutes with. But weird. Just remember you can move in all directions.
Over at his blog Seven Degrees of Freedom, Pandemic programmer Tony Albrecht has posted an explanation of the mathematics behind the “Tony” unit. If you missed the post from two weeks ago, Tony came up with a new unit of measurement to quantify the power of the three major consoles. It was all in good fun, mind you, so don’t take this as Tony’s official stance on how the consoles rank.
From the post:
The numbers I gave were;
• X360: 6 Tony units • PS3 : 14 Tony units • Wii : 0.2 Tony units
Basically, I took my personal brain power (3.2GHz – which just happens to be the same as a single HW thread of the X360) as a base unit. So, the X360 with 3 cores, each with 2 HW threads gets 3*2 = 6 Tony units.
More specifics on the PS3 and Wii can be found at the original post.
I hope Tony doesn’t mind all the attention. This is the last of it man, I promise. Unless, of course, you make something else up that’s cool.
Tony Units [Seven Degress of Freedom] Tony Albrecht Debuts “Tony” Units At Game Connect [Kotaku AU]
A quintet of Xbox Live Arcade releases are permanently getting a price drop, ushering in the Arcade Hits program. What makes something an Arcade Hit? Something that was, at one time, more expensive than it is now. Distinguished company, no? The first games to get the Arcade Hits designation will be Lumines Live!, Zuma Deluxe, Small Arms, Marble Blast Ultra and Bankshot Billiards 2. Lumines Live! for 800 Microsoft Points, here I come!
Arcade Hits [Xbox]
Vivendi Games and Activision Merge to Create Activision Blizzard Okay, I had no idea this was coming. Not sure what ramifications this will have for us in Australia, but I’m going to try and find out.
Soul Calibur IV Wants To Remind You It Has Giant Breasts Norks before nine? Of course, Kotaku delivers. No need to thank us.
Alleged Gamespot Employee Spills Guts On Valleywag The inside scoop on the whole “review scores versus advertising” debacle developing over at CNET’s gaming wing.
BioShock DLC, Fixes Due Next Week It only took three and a half months (!), but they’re finally here. A bit slow there 2K…
Assassin’s Creed PS3 Patch Arrives … Considering Ubisoft can get a patch out for Assassin’s Creed within a week or two. Keep up the good work!
Everyone’s been buzzing this weekend about the Gamespot shakeup involving Jeff Gerstmann and there’s been plenty of talk flying around in various places. Gamasutra, for instance, has a good editorial up entitled Numerals, Game Reviews, And The Game Media on some of the problems with the review structure in the gaming industry; Destructoid has a brand new look to let us know exactly what they think of Gamespot; people are planning a boycott of Gamespot and other CNet sites; our very own Crecente posed a question to all the reviewers out there: Have you been forced to rewrite a review due to advertising pressure? We’ve been inundated with examples of bad journalism, bad bosses, and big, bad, mean companies. And of course Mark Wilson wrote his own take on the problem with game reviews.
There are a couple of themes from all of this, both the personal accounts that have wound up in our inbox and the wider discussion as a whole: this is nothing new and the ramifications are a little further reaching than a single reviewer, game company, or site.
Jonathan Blow pops up occasionally on the news radar, either in relation to his game Braid or in regards to his view on the nature of games today (frequently both in combination). He’s ever so helpfully provided a zip file including the full audio of his Montreal International Games Summit presentation (given a couple of days ago) entitled “Design Reboot” and all his slides from the lecture. The presentation clocks in at one hour, a not insignificant time investment – Blow complains in his blog that “a number of news sites have written stories about it and people have started commenting on what they feel is the validity or the invalidity of the arguments,” but the comments are only taking into account 2% of the whole speech. I’d venture a guess it’s because that 2% is the stuff we’ve heard before, and the most likely to spur discussion (and calling modern MMO design “unethical” will usually do that). Rock, Paper, Shotgun sums up one of the hot points of the lecture thusly:
Blow attacks World of Warcraft, describing the grind of leveling and the reward system inherent in that as “lying to the players”, and even suggests that designers should be ashamed of exploiting illusory level-based mechanics. He argues that games are, like film and literature, becoming a powerful medium in which creators will be able to make choices they can be ashamed of. He wonders whether games as they are currently executed could lead to a “societal problem”. Gasps and nervous laughter rises from the audience as Blow delivers his ideas, an audience which reportedly included uncomfortable-looking reps from Blizzard ….
There’s more, of course (including going after the ‘moral dilemma’ of the Little Sisters in Bioshock that has been much discussed), but if it sounds interesting, you can head over to the Braid blog and snag the files.
So I woke up this morning to a press release (and a ton of emails to the tip line) announcing that Vivendi Games (which includes Blizzard) and Activision are merging. Raise your hand if you didn’t see that one coming, or do I just need another cup of coffee? Does this mean we have Guitarcraft to look forward to? The companies are going to be holding a conference call tomorrow morning at 8:30 EST that will be accompanied by a live webcast on the Vivendi and Activision websites. Vivendi will be the majority share holder in the deal after purchasing $US 1.7 billion in Activision stock, and the whole deal is reported to be worth a cool $US 18.9 billion. The full press release, with all the nitty gritty of the arrangement, is after the jump.
Update: If you don’t feel like slogging through the entirety of the press release, Blizzard has a nice little FAQ up on how this will impact the day-to-day operations of Blizzard. Short answer? It won’t. (thanks to Stephen Totilo for mentioning it).
A bunch of Kotakuites have forwarded an email from ‘The Rock Band Team’ apologizing for the “unacceptably long delay” in getting replacement guitars to customers, and promising a “FREE EA game” (as of yet unnamed). In a world of spectacularly shitty customer service, it’s always nice to see some attempts at making up for glitches in the system. So if you’re patiently waiting for a guitar replacement, looks like a new guitar and an unnamed game may be headed your way:
Greetings Rocker,
Congratulations on your purchase of Rock Band!
After reviewing our records, we see that your recent request for a replacement guitar has been subject to an unacceptably long delay due to a late shipment from our manufacturer.
By the time you receive this, your replacement guitar should be on its way to you. However, the Rock Band team is committed to providing a world-class customer experience and we do not believe we have met this commitment in connection with your request. As a token of our appreciation for your patience and understanding, we will be offering you a FREE EA game. Details will follow shortly.
We are sorry if your first experience with Rock Band has not met your expectations. We hope our gift will show you how committed we are to your satisfaction.
Thank you,
The Rock Band Team
