I have decided that waiting a whole week for a news update is a bit too much. I mean, sometimes you need to know about the changes to Star Wars: The Old Republic as soon as they happen, or you just want to know the latest in the ongoing 38 Studio saga.
Well as I’m at my PC every night filtering these stories anyway, and that is where the camera is – well why not record a quick video update on my thoughts at the moment?
Obviously being that this is the first and the weekend has just happened I will pick on some of the stories i missed over the weekend to mix into today’s highlights.
Lets start with the news that South Korea have banned the trade of virtual items for real world cash, effectively meaning that the Diablo III Real Money Auction House will never launch in that region. This must have been seen coming though as Blizzard had to remove the function the game to get past the nations ratings board in the first place.
They have also passed a separate law that forbids the use of bot’s & scripts to farm items or gold, which kinda seem like they expect the first law to be completely ignored. But hey, im not hte one that will have to police it am I.
South Korea bans virtual item trading, Diablo 3 auction house dead | IncGamers.com
South Korea to make virtual item trade, bots illegal | Massively
That is followed by the news that someone at Bioware may well have let something slip a little prematurely. In an interview with Games TM one of the Lead Designers hinted that the company were looking at Free-to-Play as an option for the game. The internet clearly went nuts about this, preaching doom on the game as having failed. This was not helped when the article about the interview was unceremoniously pulled from t he site – its as if they have never seen the internet before people noticed that almost as fast as the original posting.
This does not mean it is going to happen, just that they are thinking about it. Honestly do you think there is a single developer out there at the moment NOT looking at the F2P model? Even Blizzard have said they have looked at it. I think it’s too soon to be making a call on this story.
BioWare considering free-to-play for Star Wars: The Old Republic [Updated] | Massively
I really should add a category to the site simply for stories that I classify as ‘Shite of the highest order’ and this weekends was a whopper of a pile of shite. In the trial of Anders Brevic, the Norwegian who a few months back attacked the country and killed 77 people, the psychiatrist apparently stated that anyone over the age of 20 who plays games alone is abnormal. Really?? I think you will find that below the age of 40 (and even possibly higher) the ‘abnormal’ gamers out there outnumber the ‘normal’ none gamers.
Games had NOTHING to do with this guys actions, he has stated as much himself on many occasions – he is very clear as to what his reasons were. However the problem here is not completely the doctors words, as she herself was forced to voice an opinion after clearly stating that she had ‘no form of expertise when it comes to video games’. No the problem here is blame culture!
People do simply not want to accept that this guy was a fucking fruitloop that went on a rampage. Why must there always be a cause in all these cases? Sure there may be triggers but you know what, when your that way inclined if it was not one trigger it would be another or another. Is it not about time we started placing the blame back where it belongs – on the person that committed the crimes?
Breivik trial: “Sitting alone and playing games is not normal for a man in his 20’s” – Edge Magazine
Playing videogames at 20-years-old is ‘not normal’ -Destructoid
Well despite the world, his dog and those 3 fleas that live at the base of its tail, all being well and truly over the Draw Something craze – Zynga paid good money for this game and they are making damn sure they milk it for all that it is worth. Not content with selling words to advertisers, they have now managed to sell the concept of a TV Show based on the game to CBS.
Hate to point this out to you but its been done already – it was called Win, Lose or Draw and was on both US & UK television in the early 90’s and you know what it was interesting to start with very quickly lost its shine as well.
Zynga’s Draw Something game show coming to CBS -Destructoid
Well then, seems I am not the only one getting old and forgetful – Seems the guys at EA are doing it as well. Despite only a week ago stating that Steam sales ‘Devalue IP’s’ becasue they drop the price too much, today on Origin they massively dropped the price of a whole pile of games. Some of them have been dropped by nearly 90%.
So when Steam do it they are devaluing the IP’s, how is that any different when its you guys?
Origin Offering Deep Discounts On Many Games… Er? | Rock, Paper, Shotgun
Finally there are some new NVidia drivers are out – boosting the performance of some games by up to 18%, either way its worth updating as it improves quite a lot of games to some degree.
New NVIDIA GeForce drivers boost performance by 18% -Destructoid
