:) :)

http://pc.ign.com/articles/788/788627p1.html

(reversed order of quotes to put them so the earlier ones are first, not last)

Quote:May 18, 2007 - Editor's note: I'm writing this from a wireless connection on Blizzard' WWI show floor. Their opening ceremony is set to start any minute now. As the ceremony continues there'll be fragmented updates below. Expect more details throughout the presentation unless this wireless connection screws up. Also, expect typos. All timestamps are local time in Seoul, South Korea.

3:00 - FMV sequence in a spaceship - looks Terran - zooming in on a metal door - door opening - reveals a guy with a cigar in chains - prisoner - door shuts behind him - there's so much bass the room is shaking - guy steps into some kind of metallic devicce - legs are strapped in - guy rising toward ceiling - Korean text on screen got people very excited - another part of the machine is dropping metal arms on him - machine whirring - applying armor to his torso - extremly detailed visuals here - now guy is strapping on gloves - armor is molding together - seems like a Terran marine - rockets turn on - zerg now onscreen - Marine delivers a line - StarCraft 2 officially announced.

3:05 - Morheim says everyone eager to see actual game - going to show actual gameplay - bringing up SC2 lead designer. Dustin Browder.

3:07 - Showing gameplay footage - Looks like protoss ships - floating over asteroid/ base structure - entering protoss ase - similar looking buildings - vespene gas still in the game - character pane shows up on right side - some protoss guy - shifts to terran bases floating on rockets over same type of territory - sill collecting crystals as resources - marines load out. Dustin is actually playing the game - nothing in the game is final.

3:09 - controlling protoss zealots - still has psi blades and personal shield - new charge ability that let him quickly close range on enemies. Siege tanks shown - still the same type of behavior where they can lock down - take out zealots really quickly - new protoss unit - called immortals - have special shield that only activates upon being powerfully attacked - siege tanks could barely do any damage to them.

3:10 - Terran reapers - can hop across unever terrain with jump packs - two types of small pistols that don't activate immortals. Protoss now have the ability to create shields whereever they want. Protoss can now warp in units from manufacturing facilities anything within pylon range. New protoss unit - stalker - can teleport - quadripedal thing - can keep blinking forward - seems to be a shot cooldown on the ability. Zerg start coming in, giant worms pop out of ground unleasing zerglings. Protoss can use phase fields and teleporting abilities to create an army anywhere on the battlefield, according to Blizzard.

3:14 - Protoss colossus - huge unit that can blast out dual lasers and use long legs to traverse differences in terrain height - in the demo two of them obliterate about fifty or so zerglings.

3:15 - Zerglings can mutate into suicidal bomb things thar roll across the ground - very powerful explosions. Colossus using new IK system to move across differences in terraing height. Colossus extremley weak against air strike - New unit for protoss - Pheonix - can overcharge guns for multiple projectile blast - but after blast the ship is rendered inert for a short period.

3:16 - showing space platform environment, land mass floating over planets / nebulae. Showing phoenix units failing to destroy terran battle cruisers - new protoss unit - Warprey - flying unit that does increased damage the longer it hits a target with it's continuous blue laser.

3:18 - warprey also very effective against structures - very vulnerable to small unit fire - shws warpreys getting wiped out by terran marines. Physics system lets debris from warpreys roll down a ramp. Showing one more unit - warped in in a serious of cubes - giant floating base - called a protoss mothership - can only have 1 at a time - cost big resources - special abilities include timebomb that slows all enemy missiles inside - shows terran missle launcher shooting in projectiles that stop in the field before they reach the ship - when field ends missiles drop the ground - planet cracker attack - giant lasers stream from ship to ground - ship can be moved around while planet cracker laser is active - the ship looks like a metallic, triangular sand dollar - mothership can create a black hole anywhere it wannts to - creates distortion that actually sucks ships in and destroys them - in the demo the black hole destroyed four terran battle cruisers in about ten seconds.

3:23 - now showing terran and protoss fight - marines and zealots clashing on the ground - mothership and battle crusers in the air - framerate seems relatively stable as more units stream in - hard to tell - about 100 units on screen right now - a few of the new protoss units just came in - nuclear launch detected warning - every unit on screen destroyed - three nukes were launched at once - then zergs rush in and spell "GG" while turning into suicidal bombs.

3:26 - Showing another video of "things to come." concept art for SC2 - zerg landscapes - ruined terran structures - freen filds - SC2 looks, at least visually, strikingly similar to SC1 - both in unit and map designs. Now showing a giant rush of zerglings - probably over 100 of them, swarming with no slowdown - mroe character art - finishes with the StarCraft II logo.

Current Stock Rankings:

1. Lazy 191.50 (+$.57)
   
2. Eden Master 173.02 (-$0)
   
3. Great Rumber 145.11 (-$0)
   
4. Ryan 143.51 (+$.02)
   
5. Goron Imperial Stock 118.91 (-$0)
   
6. etoven 94.95 (-$0)
   
7. ABF 40.10 (-$0)
   
8. Bo Jackson 10.19 (-$.58)
   

Very disturbing video...

http://dynamic.cnn.com/apps/tp/video/wor...deo.ws.asx

Yeah, it just went live sometime yesterday for all the people that bought Crackdown. I haven't played it very much yet since it didn't finish downloading until after midnight last night.

Once I get some more time into it, I'll let everyone know what's up.

it links to a counter on the blizzard site to the soon to be officially announced game.

Could this be a hint?

http://www.starcraft2.com/

Completely hated the man's politics and commentary, but saying HOORAY would probably be pretty tasteless. He was 73, now he gets to find out if he was right or not.

Well, this is weird. I logged into my Japanese account on Xbox Live today (it STILL WORKS) and found a playable demo of Eternal Sonata, the upcoming RPG of AWESOME where the battle system is based on MUSIC. You can't get it using a US account, I checked. But, oddly enough, when I play it, it shows the US rating system and the entire demo is in english. Maybe it detected my system's location code and has an english translation built in that's sensitive to that.

http://technology.guardian.co.uk/news/st...61,00.html

I guess... What possible information can they get on our psychological state based on the games we make? Feel free to invent all sorts of hypothesees and then sell a book based on the unproven system, but in reality this seems about as evidence based as the great majority of all "psychological profile questionairs" they provide online. I'd be afraid if I thought this was a competent assessment.

But really the question I have is how the heck would they do this "covert monitering"? I myself don't even have the google toolbar, nor do I want it, as it's a memory waste that I'd never use anyway, so it wouldn't be through that. Other than that, how's it going to, for example, watch me play Counter-Strike or whatever online game? Unless it makes deals for all these companies to intentionally shunt the online network's bandwidth through Google's servers (which, among other things, could easily cause noticable lag, and would very much be rallied against by the user base), I don't see that happening.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/issue/96/19

An interesting article. However, I think a very obvious point seems to escape a lot of opinion articles. I keep hearing "they say they want innovation but they never want to plunk down the cash". However, there's something a lot more basic behind it. People don't KNOW about these amazing original games, especially in the white noise of terrible original games.

Someone already knows what to expect with a Final Fantasy game, but no one's ever heard of Okami. For all they know, it might totally suck, and in all likelihood, it probably is if one considers just the odds. The majority aren't running around reading news posts on gaming web logs like us. Further, there's the issue of money.

People WOULD spend the money on Okami if they could know beforehand that it was a good game.

So no, don't assume this is some artistic/political statement just like you always "KNEW" about the masses and you're totally so much more enlightened than they are. Most likely this has nothing to do with your crusade and it's just a lack of information on these newcomers.

In all honesty, you do it too. I never even considered TRYING Ty the Tazmanian Tiger, because it just looked like "yet another" platformer, you know, the churned out hundreds of boring platformers? In fact, I say that's the VERY REASON Psychonauts didn't sell well. Every person I talk to says they didn't think it would be a fun game not because "it was too original and different looking" (no one ever says or thinks that EVER), but the opposite, it looked "just like any other boring platformer". It took playing it myself to realize it actually WAS a fun game in it's own right and NOT just a boring clone.

In short, it's not that people "don't want an original game", it's much more likely that they just don't KNOW it's an original and fun game to begin with, and how WOULD they? No seriously, in the end that's the question we need to solve. How do you "tell the people"? I guess the first part would be convincing the advertisers to spend the money on these new games, but they did that with Psychonauts. Maybe the commercials should show gameplay and not just have "witty narrator dialog" and completely unrelated real world jokes. I think above all that, downloadable demos.

http://www.blizzard.com/

So apparently they did a history of their own games (Lost Vikings missing?) and a big ol' question mark at the end of that list. They have announced they are going to announce something... hurray?