Get Bonus Points for Linking to My Blog, The Must-Watch Gaming Speech This Week

You get 50 points for visiting my blog!

Apparently, a speech has made its way around the net given by Jesse Schell at the DICE Summit last week which focused on the future of gaming, where it is headed and looking beyond Facebook’s successful games like Mafia Wars and Farmville.

He goes on to talk about the psychological hook that these sort of games have of kids and adults alike and how games are trying to break into reality rather than have players escape that reality by playing games. Total mind-f***, I know. And then he gets to the part about real-world activities gaining achievements and points through what ads you pay attention to and if you decide to walk rather than drive to work and all that jazz. Seems kinda scary, but it could be just a tad exaggerated, but the idea is still there and and the speech itself holds more than what I’ve said above, so click on the jump for 50 more points! Oh and the video…
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Mid-Week Notes: Star Trek, Mass Effect, and PAX East

So, a lot of gaming is going on currently. Star Trek Online finally released the other day and I was there to greet it with an awkward out-stretched hand of uneasy peace. Cryptic has a lot of work to do if they want to keep Star Trek fans of any generation happy, but it can only get better from this point onward, right? Maybe I’m just an optimist, I guess. But if STO doesn’t put out, I always have Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 to fall back on! ME2 does for ME what Diablo 2 did for Diablo, in the sense that the sequel takes all the good out of the original and makes it ten-times better. I’m enjoying my time back on the Normandy and I can only play through the game over and over waiting for the conclusion to this fantastic space opera BioWare was gracious enough to share with the world.

On the other side of that, PAX East has sold out of 3-day passes! But lucky me I have connections and will be attending with some old guy who doesn’t want to grow up quite yet whom we’ll just call “Dad”. So, you can expect some posts about my trip to PAX East coming in late march, and hopefully I won’t fail as much as my other projects. Yeah.

In other, blog-related news. I need a new theme. I bore of looking at this one. And I need a logo. The gear is not really lazy, is it?

James Ackley and The Sounds of Guild Wars 2

Over at the Guild Wars Guru forums, a conversation about the sounds in the Guild Wars games and player’s wishes for sounds in Guild Wars 2 was met with a surprising reply by James Ackley, ArenaNet’s Audio Director, via Regina Buenaobra which you can read in full here! There’s talk of footsteps, which I’ll admit to loving in most games, if done properly of course. Also environmental and ambient sounds were a big hit in GW with me (My guild hall has a very nice waterfall that is just nice to listen to while chatting with friends and guild mates!). To say the least, I hate ArenaNet for mostsome of the things they do, but I do love it when they come through in a lot of little ways like this. Kudos for the community involvement, James and Anet!

First Post of 2010, Bethesda Working on “World of Warcraft type MMO”

So, I know it’s been almost 3 weeks with no word from me but trust me, there’s not a whole lot you missed. Yes, it’s 2010, and we have a little less than 2 years until our absolute destruction but in the meantime, did you know Bethesda missed it’s big reveal of the Elder Scrolls MMO in 2009? I know, I didn’t know either! According to VG247, “Development on the game has apparently been ongoing since late 2006, said the documents, with “tens of millions of dollars” invested and “close to a hundred people” working on it.” To add to that, there was another slip up from book publisher Waterstones saying the next Elder Scrolls game would take place 200 years after Oblivion.

Whoops.

But we already know of Zenimax, Bethesda’s parent company, opening a MMO division headed by DAoC’s own Mike Firor who have been working an an unannounced title. Well this is it. Maybe.

News Flash! AVATAR Makes A Lot of Money Opening Weekend! Guild Wars Mortgages My Soul

Thank you Captains Obvious and Duh. So, yes, AVATAR was released this past Friday and despite harsh winter conditions (at least here on the East Coast) people flocked to their local theater en masse. Over the weekend the film managed to rake in $232.2 Million, and for a movie that cost $300m that’s pretty damn good. Not record breaking, but pretty. Damn. Good.
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