Your daily dose of Drama

Need to read some really dramatic flare ups about EA, Mythic, WAR, or simply just want to see verbal sparks fly and flames erupt? Here you go, go read "EALouse"!

This should be the last about PAX 09

Still on the post PAX high. Doubly so as not me, Svayvti or any of our families kids have gotten the swine flu that took down Penny Arcade, Wil Wheaton, host of game developers and who knows who else. No, just like Wil Wheaton I have a hard time coming down from that Post-PAX high, though nobody serenaded me on video as they did WilW (or off video either for those curious).

By the way I think Bioware continues to show off why parent companies should sometimes just allow themselves to be run by subsidiaries. I guess EA should be glad I'm not a majority shareholder because I would clean house of the execs and replace them with Bioware people. So I bet the Bioware execs are "invited to resign" within the next 3 years or so. Kind of like how Mythic is being trampled under foot right now. Anyways Bioware had a very, very busy booth in contrast to EA. They also had the best handout of the convention as pictured to the right for their new Dragon Age game. They gave Dragon condoms... err, shrink wrapped inflatable swords (hmm, maybe I was right the first time) and had enough for everyone who came by. My family claimed 4 as part of our successful game swag haul.

Funcom is another company in my dog house but they did pretty well with their showing new game "The Secret World". I'm hoping that with Gaute Godager gone and Ragnar Tornquist now in charge of The Secret World that Funcom can make a good game again. Ragnar was most of the creative genius I originally liked behind the story of Anarchy Online. Then Gaute got a hold of it and tried to turn it into Everquest with future magic in several expansions and. With Gaute in charge Funcom could never keep track of what direction Anarchy Online's development was trying to go in.

I'm curious to see what PAX does to come up with more space next year, because they're definitely going to need it. Maybe they can add a 4th day? If the explosive growth of the convention keeps up then within a few years they'll just have to rent the entirety of downtown Seattle for the weekend.

Oh yeah, and Starcraft 2? It absolutely rocked.

Post PAX 09 Review

Soooo much fun. I feel sorry for those who dwell among lesser cons not knowing anything about what PAX is like. Given I didn't milk the pure fun out of it, as usual I came with an agenda and there is only so much time in the Con and different activities to choose from. First stop saturday morning was waiting in line for the exhibit hall and picking up all kinds of swag along the way.



The video above only barely begins to describe the haul of free stuff I pulled out of the con. My daughters are beating each other silly with inflatable swords from DragonAge. Lost track of how many free T-shirts I got, last count was about 8 or 9. In previous years I've gotten keyboards, my nice Razer gaming mouse and others from raffles. Unfortunately I had no raffle winnings this year.

I headed straight for the Stardock booth and got to play with the Elemental Alpha build which is already a ton of fun. I've been posting more pictures of the Alpha over on their game forums if you're following it. I couldn't wait to get back the second day and pay for my pre-order of the game.



Then I just had to get a few pictures of people in costumes. There are so many I didn't get pictures of that I wish I had. Luckily I'm not the only one there taking pictures so I can enjoy the exhibits while other people do the business of covering the convention. But I did get the picture of Pirates up on stage. Yeah, dancing Pirates on a Tom Clancy Splinter Cell stage... what did you do with your weekend?


All this before the day was even half over. I got to talk with several HR people about advancing in the gaming industry and how to sell my myself. So hey, maybe somebody is looking to hire a good QA person who can double as a great editor? They actually had better tips than a lot of other "get a job" discussions I've been to.

I got in a good game of Anima Tactics at the convention, sat in on the Legend of Neil interview panel (and saw today's new episode ahead of time), and a few minutes of concert before heading home on the first day.

Yeah, I'll be blogging a lot more about PAX all week!

The Inevitable Fallout of EA & "Sin to Win"

How is it that EA manages to stay in business? They're just one EA-Fail after another, such that they just got the before linked twitter site dedicated to their constantly occurring failures.

So well now they've issued an apology... sort of... on the obscure twitter service twitpic:

We understand there's a lot of debate right now around our "Sin to Win" promotion at Comic-Con and wanted to clarify a few things. We created this promotion as part of our marketing efforts around the circle of Lust (one of the nine sins/circles of Hell). Each month we will be focusing on a new Circle of Hell. This month is Lust. Costumed reps are a tradition at Comic-Con. In the spirit of both the Circle of Lust and Comic-Con, we are encouraging attendees to Tweet photos of themselves with any of the costumed reps at Comic-Con here, find us on Facebook or via e-mail. "Commit acts of lust" is simply a tongue-in-cheek way to say take pictures with costumed reps. Also, a "Night of Lust" means only that the winner will receive a chaperoned VIP night on the town with the Dante's Inferno reps, all expenses paid, as well as other prizes.

We apologize for any confusion and offense that resulted from our choice of wording, and want to assure you that we take your concerns and sentiments seriously. We'll continue to follow your comments and please let us know if you have any other thoughts or concerns. Keep watching as the event unfolds and we hope you'll agree that it was all done in the spirit of the good natured fun of Comic-Con.

There is a lot of debate? Yeah, about whether the people at EA are stupid or just sexist misogynists. They take the concerns so seriously they're not even willing to give the apology the same attention they gave the contest. The good news is that apparently not even the lowliest comic-con attendee can match EA's level of low... because nobody sent in any entries for the contest. Wow! EA thought we were confused but the reality is everybody thought you were just stupidly misogynistic to participate. Plus the marketing morons advertising yourself like a game of Evony is not a way to impress hardcore gamers into playing your game.

So at least EA sticks to its guns. In the EA manuscript their customers are pirates, they're stupid, and they just don't understand these disgustingly stupid mysogynist contests they produce... they will never admit to making mistakes, being outright wrong, or making bad management decisions.

Maybe instead of laying off competent people at your studio acquisitions, you should be laying off the managers at EA. Instead of merging and firing the heads of successful studios like Mythic and Bioware, maybe you should be asking what it would take for them to replace the incompetent managers at the parent company with a long, long history of being unethical screwups.

Maybe pigs will fly and I'll get rich writing a blog.

Bad News for Bioware fans

I've got a few friends who are really looking forward to the Knights of "The Old Republic" MMO from Bioware. I warned them not to get their hopes up too high since EA is now in charge.

Sure enough, EA has put Paul Bennett in charge of Creative Director for Bioware-Mythic. Yes, coming over from the greatly successful MMO studios of EA (what MMO didn't they sink?) and coming on board for the slowly sinking ship that is WAR (recently laying off massively in their QA and customer service departments as per my prior blog entry) is now in charge of Creative development. Because when you're a big egotistical manager for a hugely egotistical corporation like EA or SOE you always take your failed managers and promote them on to your new great endeavors.

Head for the link to read more of this creative vision that he is bringing or enforcing on Bioware.

Paul Bennett: The concept of there being MMOs is probably dead. There are just games. There's online games, and very soon there will just be games. They will all be online anyway. I don't think there's an MMO any more. I think there's online games and there's online revenue, and they're sort of going to combine.

Tip of the Hat to Broken Toys

Update note: I guess the working title of the new MMO is simply "The Old Republic" and the 'Knights of' is not part of it.