Weekly Wrap Up: Gordon Freeman In The House?

...I swear if this is some kind of sick joke.

A Valve employee has been spotted wearing a Half-Life 3 t-shirt. Yes, apparently Chandana Ekanayak, an executive producer at Uber Entertainment (the guys behind Monday Night Combat), spotted a random valve employee wearing the shirt pictured above. Now, hold on a second here (prepare for your dreams to be deleted here, along with mine), before we get too carried away I'd like to point out that Random Valve Employee Man had absoluetly no problem having a a picture of the shirt taken by Ekanayak, who proceeded to stick it up on Twitter. If Valve were really close to a Half-Life 3 reveal they most certainly would be doing their gosh darnedest to keep it under wraps until the big reveal. Not to mention stuff like this can get someone fired. So unless Random Valve Employee Guy really disliked his job with one of the premier game developers, I think it unlikely he'd just let a picture be taken unless it meant very little for the time being.

That said we'll have to wait and see what Valve's inevitable response to this will be.

In the meantime, here's some more gaming news from the past week.

Sony Clarifies One Account Policy For PS Vita

NeoGaf discovered this weekend that the Playstation Vita will allow only one Playstation Network account per portable.

So what in blazes does that mean exactly?

At a recent hands-on event, Sony tried to clarify. "Only one account. If you want to use a different account you need to format the system to factory settings." Sony's Brad Douglas, Sony Japans Third-Party Relations guy clarified further by mentioning that the Playstation Portable also only allows one account. The only difference is that the Portable doesn't force you to do a factory reset to log in. The main reason players have two accounts is so they can play digital titles available in Japan, as well as their own country. The factory reset throws a wrench into that by forcing you to stay region locked essentially, unless you like jumping through very small hoops on fire draped over piranha tanks. 


EA Online Passes Can Expire 
A now, and understandably so, disgruntled NeoGaf member has learned that the online passes that EA requires for access to it's games online content expire after a certain amount of time after purchasing a brand new copy of Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit only to find the games online pass activation key had expired. Some other members looked through the EULA and did find a clause that states the codes can in fact expire. Joystiq followed up on the story and as it turns out some games passes are set to expire, according to a customer service advisor with EA. So essentially for these games even if you buy the game new you will still have to pay to access online features, a move initially made to combat used game sales.

Again, people are understandably upset with EA. I think it's absolutely unbelievable that they never really came out and notified anyone about this. Yes it's in their EULA agreement but this is the kind of thing people really need to know ahead of time.

XCOM Loses A Developing Team

2K games has announced that it's Canberra, Australia development team, which was helping to work on the upcoming XCOM reboot, would be shifted to help with development of Bioshock: Infinite instead.

Initially, this lead to speculation that XCOM might be on hold, or might have even been canceled. However, 2K Games told Kotaku that 2K Marin was still developing the game with the hope that the game would still be a strong title. However, when pressed for more information about the size of the development team, 2K declined to get more specific. "As a rule we do not comment on the size of our development team."

I don't view this as a setback for XCOM necessarily. Bioshock: Infinite is shaping up to be one of the premier titles for next year, and 2K probably recognizes that in order to get it out in time for it's tenative holiday 2012 release, they're going to need as many people working on it as possible.

GamePro Sails Away Into The Sunset

This news is not a good sign for the state of the printed gaming press.

One of the longest running magazines about video games, starting way back in 1988, GamePro announced that it will be ceasing it's publication as a standalone company as of today, December 5th. Both the site, and the magazine will be shutting down. In a statement on their site (which probably no longer exists) was this:

Thank you for your loyalty, support, and participation in the GamePro.com community. At noon on December 5, 2011, the U.S. version of GamePro online will shut down as an independent site. GamePro will become part of PCWorld.com (http://www.pcworld.com/gamepro) offering gaming news, reviews, and how-tos from the PCWorld team. Thank you to the entire GamePro staff for their hard work and dedication.

 GamePro was one helped to give the games industry a voice, especially as it began it's rise into the pop culture stratosphere. Handfuls of talented writers and journalists have written for the magazine. It's death is a significant blow to gaming journalism and really give us a sign of the times.

Dragon Age Getting Multiplayer

An insider has claimed that Dragon Age will be getting a multiplayer mode that has an arena-like style to it. The mode will cover Player versus Environment, Player versus Player, and Player versus Dragon play modes. Details on the PvE section are slim, but according to the source the mode is fairly far along in development. IT is apparently being developed using DICE's Frostbite 2.0 engine. What was not made clear is if this rumored multiplayer mode is going to be DLC of some kind for Dragon Age II, or if it will be in an upcoming game. Or perhaps a game on it's own entirely. 


Sadly, this news seems to confirm somewhat the rumors that EA is requiring all of it's games to have some kind of online multiplayer. And unlike the Mass Effect co-op mode, so far this mode sounds somewhat unrelated to anything in Dragon Age as of now. Then again we didn't know exactly what Mass Effect's multiplayer was exactly until it was announced/leaked. Still given the success of recent RPG's like Skyrim and Skyward Sword, one has to wonder if requiring games that have previously been single player to have multiplayer is a good idea or not. 


Okay so maybe this past week wasn't all happy news. Hopefully this coming week will be a bit happier. And, with a bit of luck, maybe some Gordon Freeman too.  

Weekly Wrap Up: A New Format

Before we get started...

Okay, so you know how this blog has been updated here and there with some in depth stories and pieces? Yeah that's changing today. I'm making some changes to make this place somewhere where you can keep coming back all the time to find new stuff to read and listen to. A lot of this will be a work in progress as I go along, and more changes will more than likely to occur. As per the usual, your guys job is to spread the word as much as you can, and mine will be to keep them (and you) coming back for more.

Don't fear though, if you enjoyed what I used to do, those kinds of things will still be here, and I will still be writing new ones. But I felt like I could make this blog somewhere people flock to for the most interesting reading material about video games period. So, let's see how this goes.

- Nolan


...Let it begin.

The reason I almost missed Thanksgiving dinner.

This past week was, for us here in America (ummm....hell yeah?) was Thanksgiving. The day after Thanksgiving is traditionally Black Friday, the single biggest shopping day in the world. Ridiculous sales are on in every shop and everyone knows it's the best chance they have to haul in huge savings while doing Christmas shopping. Nonetheless the world continued to spin, so here are some of the highlights in news and interesting accomplishments from the past seven days.

South Korea's "Cinderella Law" Goes Into Effect

Fearing the problem that game addiction in a technologically focused country could have on the next generation of Koreans, South Korea has put into effect a law that bans players under the age of 16 from playing online between midnight and six in the morning. The law was drafted in April, and while it initially only covered MMORPGS, the law was extended to cover all kinds of gaming.

The law has met (obviously so) some harsh criticism from various gaming groups. The Korean Association of Game Industry, a massing of fourteen publishers and developers, has called it "excessive prohibition" of a specific group, and reportedly has plans to file a lawsuit.

The obvious reason behind this law is that teenagers should be spending the evening hours sleeping rather then gaming, but the law calls into question the civil liberties of children. And while the Korean government have made their views crystal clear, one has to wonder if this kind of law could spark similar reactions elsewhere in the world. The law also calls into question whose job it is to see that children get a decent amount of sleep, but for now this law is here to stay.

Curious Elder Scrolls Player Finds Entire Continent Beyond Skyrims Borders

One person playing Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim decided he just had to know what lay beyond the invisible boundaries of Skyrim's game world. I'm not entirely sure what he was expecting when he turned no-clip mode on to see what lay beyond Skyrims invisible borders, but I can guarantee he did not expect to find the entire continent of Tamrieal. The player took numerous screenshots as he flew around, seeing such sights as the Vvardenfell volcano and the Imperial City (well, the land area it sits upon anyhow.)

The question now is what exactly are they doing there? The most likely answer is so that when players look out over the horizon, they can see familiar landscape landmarks from past games, to help them feel like they are in the same world as the past Elder Scrolls games, but who knows? Maybe there is some sort of secret Bethesda hasn't let us in on yet.

New Xbox 360 Dashboard Launches December 6th

The title is somewhat self explanatory. Microsoft will roll out it's newest version of the Xbox Dashboard on the 6th. Aside from a sleeker look, the new dashboard will have greater integration for Kinect Voice Recognition. This is also the same day that the Microsoft will be launching some new TV and movie apps, so Xbox users should be paying special attention to this date.

All in all a quiet week overall, but the "Cinderella Law" (as it is apparently being called) that went into effect in South Korea this past week is an obviously important event. South Korea has earned a notorious reputation for how seriously they take their games, and for how long some people play them. But, as stated above, this law causes many questions to appear, and some have no clear answers. I personally find this law a bit of drastic step, and for parents it's somewhat of a slap in the face that the government has decided that they can't keep their children offline. We'll see what kind of an uproar we get from this law in the coming weeks.