“Internet petitions” rank right up there with “zillion dollar Xbox Live DLC” on my list of favourite subjects. We could spend all day writing about them, and they’re still worth the paper they are printed on*. That said, a drive to get Dark Souls ported to the PC has traction, thanks to a Namco Bandai representative’s comment to the community. More »
To many of us, custom button remapping in video games is a luxury, but for quadriplegic gamer Chuck Bittner, forced to control games with his mouth, it’s a necessity. More »
EB Games, Australia’s largest videogame retailer, has now officially thrown its support behind the campaign for the introduction of an R18+ classification for games. More »
As Kotaku’s resident colour-blind gamer, I feel a duty to point out that some of my brethren have asked Infinity Ward to patch Modern Warfare 2 to remove the game’s red-green/enemy-teammate confusion. More »
Online petitions ain’t worth much to me – just once, I’d like to see someone with a clipboard outside a GameStop doing this in person. But on some topics they’re meaningful, like the Infinity Ward/dedicated server fiasco that broke yesterday. More »
The petition to get offline network play added back in to Starcraft II has hit 100,000 signatures. Doesn’t mean Blizzard will shift away from funneling everyone into Battle.Net. But six figures is a credible number. More »
Angered by news that Blizzard has decided to leave LAN multiplayer out of StarCraft II, fans are doing what fans have done in such situations since the dawn of time – signing a letter. More »
Students at the Academy of Notre Dame in Tyngsboro, Massachusetts, are up in arms over Activision’s Call of Duty: World at War for promoting the killing of deadly attack dogs.
Yes, Diablo III is going to be much more vivid and vibrant than its predecessors, a fact that has some fans signing a petition against the shinier, happier art direction – now with over fifteen thousand signatures. Tracey John over at MTV Multiplayer spoke with Diablo III lead producer Keith Lee about the during the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational in Paris this past weekend, who defended the move towards a brighter, more colourful Diablo.
“One of the things that we considered when we were working on the visuals for ‘Diablo III’ is the fact that colour is your friend. We feel that colour actually helps to create a lot of highlights in the game so that there is contrast. A great analogy is like in ‘Lord of the Rings’ — not everything is dark. It allows you to see what a creepy dungeon can be like but if everything is dark it doesn’t allow you to have a lot of contrast.”
Lee also explains that they want players excited to enter and explore new areas, rather that simply provide the same dark environments over and over again.
Lee does admit that fan feedback is a major factor in how Blizzard develops titles. It’ll be interesting to see what impact – if any – the petition has on the development of the game.
‘Diablo III’ Producer Justifies Controversial Art Direction: ‘Colour Is Your Friend’ [MTV Multiplayer]
After years of hoping, praying, cajoling, and begging for a follow-up, Blizzard has finally announced Diablo III, and fans all over the world cheered before getting down to business – complaining. A petition has gone up at whiner headquarters PetitionOnline, with over 2,000 fans signing on to complain about the game’s art direction. Petitioners feel that the graphics we’ve seen so far depict a world that is far too bright and cartoony for their liking, citing World of Warcraft as one of the influences ruining their dark and macabre series. Where is the light radius? Why are those shoulder pads so huge? Here’s an example of something they are complaining about.
Outside scenarios with vivid colours, beautiful forests with colourful vegetation, shinny and beautiful waterfalls where even rainbows take place.
They hate rainbows! They can’t draw gothic fan art with rainbows in it!
*sigh* It just goes to show you that no matter how hard you try there’s just no pleasing some people.
Renewed artistic direction for Diablo 3 [PetetionOnline.com via WorthPlaying]
