Games | CTH

May 2012
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Activision Tried to Have Its Employee’s Computers Hacked

J. TECH - May - 17th

Activision asked an employee to "dig up dirt" on Call of Duty developers, Jason West and Vince Zampella.
By JOHNATHAN GREY CARTER 17 MAY 2012

According to a court document obtained by the Los Angeles Times, Activision's former IT chief, Thomas Fenady, testified that he was asked by Activision's in-house lawyer, George Rose, to hack Zampella and West's voicemail, email and computers in what he called "Operation Icebreaker."

Fenady testified that the aim of the operation was to build a case for firing West and Zampella; either because they were planning on jumping ship to EA, or because Activision owed them royalty money, depending on which side of the drawn-out court battle between the two parties you believe. Rose testified that the operation was formed as part of "contingency planning" about the Modern Warfare developers' future with the company. Told not to "worry about the repercussions of [his] actions," Fenady tried to hire an outside company, InGuardians, to perform the task, but the company apparently couldn't get past the "legal hurdles" the operation presented. Stymied, Fenady approached Activision's Facilities department with a cunning plan. If they could stage a "fake fumigation" and a "mock fire drill," Zampella and West would be pulled away from their computers long enough for someone, who I like to imagine would be dressed as a ninja, to copy the contents of their hard drives. Fenady's plan never reached fruition, and Activision and its attorneys refused to comment on his testimony.

J. TECH - May - 2nd

By Mike Snider MAY 1, 2012

The next installment in the multibillion-dollar Call of Duty franchise has a two-pronged strategy: explore past Cold War covert relations and gaze into the geopolitical crystal ball to foresee how a new Cold War might play out. Call of Duty: Black Ops II, due Nov. 13 for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PCs, continues the story of Special Forces operator Alex Mason, who helped thwart Soviet plans to attack the USA in the late '60s in 2010's Black Ops.

But the new game takes players to the future, in the shoes of Mason's son, David Mason, who in the year 2025 is assigned to protect the president. That takes Black Ops into territory usually trod only by the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare series, which sets its action in the near future. In the past, the Call of Duty games developed by the studio Treyarch have been set in World War II or the Vietnam era. Publisher Activision alternates Call of Duty releases between Treyarch and Infinity Ward, which along with newcomer Sledgehammer Games created last year's Modern Warfare 3. Whatever the setting, since 2007's Modern Warfare, each subsequent Call of Duty release has sold more than 11 million copies, and each of the past three years the franchise has set sales records. Modern Warfare 3 topped the $1 billion sales mark in just 16 days. "No one is going to be able to call this Black Ops 1.5," says Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg . "There's a lot of new stuff in this game. There's a lot of new ideas. We are going for it. We are taking some risks."

RUMOR: Android OS on the Wii U?

J. TECH - May - 2nd

By CHRIS YOUNG MAY 1, 2012

There have been a lot of rumors flying around lately about the Wii U running a version of Android OS. Nintendo and Google have yet to confirm anything regarding the marrying of their console and operating system.

It does leave Android owners, and prospective Wii U buyers, to wonder about the different possibilities this pairing could offer. Nintendo has lacked in the department of downloadable content and applications. The addition of Android’s Google Play Store to the Wii U could be of enormous help when it comes to ”filling the cabinets” with media and applications. We are particularly interested to see how the Wii U’s tablet controller interfaces with the system and software. With the controller essentially being a tablet, Nintendo could bite right into that oh so popular gaming market that has made Apple‘s iOS and Android devices popular. Given the right integration, Nintendo could gain a massive back catalog of games and entertainment on day one of the Wii U’s release.

J. TECH - Apr - 30th

By Brett Todd April 25, 2012 repost here 4/30/2012

This is not your average Telltale Games adventure. The developer best known for all-ages affairs like the Back to the Future and Tales of Monkey Island franchises has nimbly waded into the guts and gore of the zombie apocalypse with the first episode of its five-part take on The Walking Dead.

A New Day is chock-full of all the bursting brains, eaten entrails, and sudden deaths of leading characters that feature prominently in both Robert Kirkman's award-winning comic series and the freewheeling TV show adaptation. Marty McFly might not approve, but you certainly will if you have even the slightest taste for good zombie stories…and a strong stomach to deal with the many gross-out moments. What makes A New Day so compelling is its attention to appearance, plot, and character development. To help with clarity, the art sheds the black-and-white style of the comics in favor of vibrant color, though it uses similar art to that drawn by Charlie Adlard in the current issues. Fans may yearn for an option to go into a black-and-white mode, but the game art builds nicely on its paper inspiration. The PC and console versions of the game look much the same, although the PC edition is best overall with the smoothest animations.

Apple + Valve = OS X Gaming Push

J. TECH - Apr - 17th

By Chris Burns, Apr 15th 2012 repost here 4/16/2012

This weekend we’re hearing basically every single tech, gaming, and Apple-heavy site flip out over the idea that Tim Cook’s visit to Valve means an Apple gaming console is in the mix – I disagree.

Several simple factors mean that Apple‘s next-generation television push isn’t going to be a full-fledged television, and several simple factors count Valve out of the physical gaming system game as well. Instead, I contend that Apple will be releasing their next-generation MacBook Pro line with emphasis on graphics and computing power, with Valve’s library of OS X-compatible games there to back up their claims. Apple has not created a new device recently outside the low-impact Thunderbolt display you’ve probably not seen advertized but definitely notice in the store since it’s the most gigantic display in the house. Apple has modified and pushed new generations of tried-and-true products for several years now, their last big really NEW release being the original iPad. The Apple TV system that’s out right now is a box that works with any modern HDTV. Valve is in the business of distributing desktop computer-based games and officials speaking for Valve have dismissed the idea that they’d be making any hardware in the near future. Valve has also noted that the possibility that they would make hardware some time in the future (not now, but eventually) would be a possibility. Ask your aunt, your high school teacher, or any schmo off the street what Valve is and they’ll tell you it’s what they crank to turn their garden hose on.

Resident Evil 6 and the Death of Camp

J. TECH - Apr - 11th

Capcom's horror series looks better than ever, and its designers aim to incorporate a tone to match.
By Jeremy Parish 04/10/2012

When people talk about Resident Evil — at least, the old-school Resident Evil, before the fourth game reinvented the series' entire feel and nature — they fall, inexorably, into the deep gravity well of the PlayStation original's intensely campy dialogue. Ridiculous as its script and inept as its acting were, the sheer awfulness of Resident Evil's presentation was a crucial factor in elevating it to the status of true classic. As its play mechanics grew stale with age and its full-motion video sequences became increasingly dated, the B-movie quality of its narrative helped tie the whole thing together, lending its more aged elements the charming appeal of a 1970s budget horror flick.

It's not timeless, exactly, but it's schlockiness somehow made it impervious to the passage of time nevertheless. Nearly two decades later, Capcom finally seems determined to drop the series' hokeyness once and for all. The team behind Resident Evil 6 — specifically Hiroyuki Kobayashi, Eiichi Sasaki, and Yoshiyuki Hirabayashi — are treating RE6 as a sort of coming-of-age for the series. In terms of play mechanics, RE6 doesn't stray far from what's come before. On the contrary, you could easily describe it as a culmination of every previous chapter of the series. The demo Capcom presented at its recent Captivate event in Rome was set in a dark mansion (as in the original Resident Evil), hinted at three different overlapping scenarios (one-upping Resident Evil 2's two-character "zapping" system), built on the shooter mechanics of Resident Evil 4, and featured a partner system for all three scenarios to allow for drop-in drop-out coop (evolving Resident Evil 5's design). No, the difference between RE6 and what's come before is less in how it's played and more in how it's presented.

J. TECH - Apr - 11th

Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition for PC official… with Games for Windows Live.
By Mike Sharkey Apr 11, 2012

Kinda cool when big companies give the people exactly what they want, isn't it? Rare too, like liger rare. That's what makes today's announcement all the more crazy-hybrid-jungle-cat special. Following a sizable fan petition, Namco Bandai announced today at an event in Las Vegas that Dark Souls will kill many, many PC adventurers this August.

Credit From Software with having a terrific poker face. Asked about the game a month back, head of R&D Masanori Takeuchi said, "That's going to be a decision left up to the publisher, Namco Bandai, but yes, we have seen the comments and we do know of the desire for a PC version." Those comments Takeuchi mentions are in the form of 90,000-plus PC gamers who signed the Dark Souls for PC petition. Namco Bandai heard them, and it is responding with Dark Souls for PC. There's only one hugely annoying drawback to this decidedly good news: Dark Souls PC will use Games for Windows Live for its online modes (as indicated by the big GFWL logo on the box art Namco Bandai showed off). Whhhhhhhy?

J. TECH - Apr - 7th

By IBTIMES STAFF REPORTER April 6, 2012

Fans are eagerly awaiting Microsoft's upcoming console, which is said to be called the Xbox 720. Rumors and speculations about the gaming system have been circulating the Internet, and a new batch of expected features could have gamers gearing up for the release.

The Xbox 720 may include a Blu-ray player and require a steady Internet connection, according to a report from VG247 earlier this week. The device, which is scheduled for a holiday 2013 release, will also have two GPUs. "It's like two PCs taped together," a source said to the video game news source. Although these specs aren't officially confirmed, according to VG247, the graphics cards are rumored to be equivalent to the AMD's 7000 series GPUs. However, they will not be structured as they are in a normal dual PC-setup. In a typical double PC format, the two chips take turns to draw lines of the same object. But with Microsoft's new console, the graphic units will work independently to draw separate items simultaneously. The PlayStation 4, known internally as Orbis, is also said to feature the same type of AMD hardware. This is interesting, considering a rumor surfaced at the end of March saying that the new Xbox would be using "an already outdated low-end GPU," according to Piki Geek. The new Xbox will be sporting "four or six" cores to its CPU, with one entire core devoted to the Kinect and another reserved for the device's operating system. The next generation of the motion censored move-to-play Xbox feature will be automatically built into the device as standard, replacing the current external add-on

John Romero Making PC Shooter

J. TECH - Apr - 7th

By Pete Haas 04/05/2012

Doom and Quake designer John Romero finally revealed some details about the shooter project he was teasing last month. The unnamed shooter is being developed for the PC and will have an "MMO-ish" feel. "It's a persistent game, it has persistent player data, the character grows and gets better over time.

I think most gamers expect that now anyway, but this was a design I'd done a while ago. I think it's pretty valid," Romero told Eurogamer. "You will be playing the game as you would expect a shooter to feel, but the specifics of your situation, narrative wrapper and reward system are all unique. I wouldn't want to give out any specifics until I'm close to shipping it. I've learned my lesson about talking too soon about specific game features and release dates" That last sentence about "talking to soon" is no doubt a reference to Daikatana. Daikatana, if you're too young to remember, was the much-hyped shooter that Romero designed in the late nineties. It was supposed to be the flagship game of his new studio Ion Storm. The company took out a full page ad stating that John Romero was going to make you his bitch. The game suffered a string of delays, though, and turned out to be kind of a mess. While Romero didn't offer concrete details on the game, he suggests it'll be more fast-paced than modern-day shooters. In other words, it'll be more like Quake than Gears of War.

J. TECH - Mar - 29th

By Rue Liu, Mar 28th 2012

Epic Games has revealed that it is licensing its Unreal Engine 3 to the FBI, the Army, and other government agencies. This is the same engine behind popular massive multiplayer games, such as Gears of War and Mass Effect.

It will be put to use for developing training games that involve medical, decision-making, and crime scene simulations. The Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 3 was licensed through reseller Virtual Heroes via the Unreal Government Network (UGN) that sponsors gaming projects for government partners. Through UGN, the FBI will use the Unreal Engine to develop multiplayer crime scene simulation games to train agents and recruits. Virtual Heroes also has a partnership with the IARPA, which would mean more widespread use of the Unreal Engine 3 for intelligence agency training through IARPA’s Sirius program. The Sirius program develops “serious games” that train decision-making by intelligence personnel.

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