GamersPeople do crazy things. Take for example a handful of recent happenings, including one person's attempt to blackmail a videogame developer/publisher with suicide and another calling a publisher's falling stock price an act of divine retribution. Now LiveNews (via Kotaku) is reporting the latest unbelievable videogame headling: A South Korean teen set fire to a nearby warehouse after an unsatisfying game session.
The 15-year-old boy, whose name and school have been withheld, started the fire this weekend in Chuncheon after "his computer games did not go well," claims the Yonhap news agency. The blaze caused an estimated 4 million South Korean won ($3,043) in damage.
Although current information does not indicate the name of the "computer game" the boy became frustrated with, it's worth noting that videogames are sometimes taken more seriously in South Korea than in other regions. With titles such as StarCraft having become a cultural touchstone as relevant to South Korea as a major sport is to the U.S., the weight of his virtual struggles may be greater than one would initially assume. Then again, we didn't see Peyton Manning setting fire to any buildings after his frustrating loss to the Chargers this weekend.
It seems that there won't be any new Lego Harry Potter after all. At least, not in 2009. And that has cleared the way for a whole new round of speculation on the franchise's next entry.
Eurogamer is reporting that one of their sources has told them that there will be no Lego Harry Potter in the next twelve months. It had been widely speculated that the popular franchise was due for an entry in the Lego series soon, especially with a new movie on the way, but obstacles such as Electronic Arts' Harry Potter publishing deal stand in the way. For now it looks like Potter fans will have to wait.
Don't despair though, Lego fans. In an interview with BBC Radio 1, Traveller's Tale producer Nick Ricks said, "There will be a LEGO game in 2009. And I think it's okay to say that you'll be a bit surprised."
Join us, dear reader, as we venture into a terrifying yet exciting alternate reality. A reality where tacos don't exist, where an 8-8 football teamdoesn't somehow make it into the Divisional NFL Playoff week, and -- most significantly -- where Mirror's Edge was not made for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC, but for the Wii instead.
Just what would it be like to play Mirror's Edge if it did have Wiimote and Balance Board support? We may never know for sure, but thanks to the video above (via NintendoWiiFanboy), we have a pretty good idea. For whatever reason, someone decided to design and demonstrate their own Balance Board controls for the game, and while they're not actually playing with the board, through the magic of editing, it sure looks like they are.
The controls are kind of ingenious: It looks like tapping the top of the board with your toes would generate up-movement (jumping, vaulting, etc.), while tapping the bottom of the board with your heels would generate down-movement (sliding, rolling, etc.). Add in a few Wii remote gestures for things like opening doors, fighting, and climbing up onto ledges from cat-hangs, and you have a complete, efficient Mirror's Edge control scheme.
According to a story from the Middletown Journal (via Game Politics), during an online conversation with a Blizzard representative an Ohio teen said, "he was suicidal and that the game is the only thing he has to live for." That rep then did what (I hope) anyone in customer service would do, and called 911.
Police and paramedics rolled to the player's house only to learn from the boy when they arrived that it was all a joke. According to the report, the teen told officers he hoped "to try and get what he wanted for the game." The police apparently didn't find the incident very funny, and charged the boy with a first-degree misdemeanor.
Whether suicidal or not, let's hope the young man has someone to talk things through with. Attempting to blackmail a game company by making suicidal claims is nothing to laugh about. With the intensity many WoW players put in their game, it's important to take a step back and keep things in perspective.
1UP's Game Night: Street Fighter 4 Time: Tuesday, January 6, 2009, 5 p.m. PST Location: Watch the embedded video player right here in this story. Questions: Ask your question in the Game Night thread on the Street Fighter 4 boards.
If you aren't too busy with your holiday gifts or recovering from a rowdy night of auld lang syne, Major Nelson brings word that you can now pick up the demo for The Lord of the Rings: Conquest on Xbox Live Marketplace. The game takes a page from the popular Star Wars: Battlefront series, letting you choose your side in massive battles. The game was pushed to 2009, but seeing that we're now in 2009, the release of January 9 seems that much closer. Check out the heavy 1.25 GB demo and let us know what you think.
It's crazy to think that it's been five years since we launched 1UP (well, technically a little more than five -- the site went live in October 2003, but we waited until the end of the year, when we were out of the heavy game-release season, to post this story). In some ways, it seems like that was such a long time ago; in others, it seems like it was just yesterday. But either way, when you look back at everything that we've accomplished in that time -- growing from this fledgling website that served as an online presence for Ziff Davis' gaming magazines to a network of game sites that now reaches over 13 million people a month -- it really puts things into perspective. We've been busy.
Over the years we've been through multiple redesigns; we've expanded our content with cheats, videos, and files; we've been steadily building the largest social network for gamers; and we've started syndicating our content out to partners like ESPN and Amazon. But the main reason we've been so busy and have built such an audience is the content that we produce every day. Attempting to carry on the great tradition of our print magazines, it's always been our mission to create the very best content in the business -- the most informative and entertaining coverage of games. But this doesn't just mean having the highest standards for our editorial -- it means digging deeper and thinking differently. It means looking at the bigger picture and focusing on the culture or trends in the industry. It means having fun and expressing our personality.
We've also embraced new forms of media to produce our content, from blogs to videos to podcasts, and we've approached everything with the same ideals. Nowadays, we publish hundreds of articles each week, multiple weekly audio and video shows, and an endless stream of blogs. It's more material than any single person could consume.
Gamers take many things for granted. For instance, anyone who's used Steam to purchase a game more than once probably hasn't given a second thought to the ability to redownload any of their games on any computer; I know I certainly haven't. Now imagine having that right stripped away, only to be charged for it -- and with a time restriction, to boot. That's apparently the case when purchasing a game digitally through EA's online store as Ars Technica recently discovered.
After adding a game to your cart, you'll find that you can add the "Extended Download Service" to your cart for an additional $6.99. As the site explains, purchasing the EDS "means that with the purchase of your digital product, we'll keep a copy of your file for two full years, so you don't have to. You'll gain peace of mind knowing that we have your program stored and ready for you to download again at your convenience."
This isn't a new policy at all; Spore fans discovered it as early as June. But now that EA games are available through Steam, will anyone but the uninformed opt to purchase games through EA's store? Ars was able to trace the root of this policy back to distributor Digital River, although that's unlikely to dissuade the haters as they ready themselves to place all of the blame on EA. But between this and the potential for a service like Steam to become unavailable (whether temporarily or permanently, however unlikely that might be), you can count on proponents of physical media to use this as ammo in the ongoing argument of physical versus digital media.
The present invention provides a highly scalable architecture for a three-dimensional graphical, multi-user, interactive virtual world system. In a preferred embodiment a plurality of users interact in the three-dimensional, computer-generated graphical space where each user executes a client process to view a virtual world from the perspective of that user. The virtual world shows avatars representing the other users who are neighbors of the user viewing the virtual word. In order that the view can be updated to reflect the motion of the remote user's avatars, motion, information is transmitted to a central server process which provides positions updates to client processes for neighbors of the user at that client process. The client process also uses an environment database to determine which background objects to render as well as to limit the movement of the user's avatar.
It will be for the lawyers to determine, but 3D virtual world games with avatars sounds like just about every popular MMO out there. This action appears intended to force that issue. The very first item sought as judgment by Worlds is an order finding the patent to be valid and enforceable.
If the court finds in Worlds.com's favor, then along with likely monetary damages and unknown changes to NCsoft's titles, other publishers could find themselves on the receiving end of similar suits. In an update, Virtual World News spoke with World.com's lead attorney Stephen F. Roth who said, "I'm not at liberty to disclose what other companies I believe come within the scope of the claims," and added, "I think it is a very broad and robust claim, managing both bandwidth and the display and interaction of avatars in virtual worlds and massively multiplayer games."
The holiday timing of the filing means it may be a while before we know the next developments in the case. NCsoft probably won't be officially served with the complaint until after the New Year, and then they have 20 days to respond. Until then there's no need to panic, but for MMO fans this is definitely something to keep an eye on.
According to a story from the 
Virtual Worlds News