Blizzard theme park contest

Blizzard Entertainment has released some details on their theme park contest:

We’re challenging you to design and illustrate your own Blizzard Entertainment Theme Park, including roller coasters, water rides, shows, shopping areas, food courts, game areas, patrons, and whatever fantastic attractions you desire.
Submit your original park design by March 30, 2009, and we’ll choose our favorites based on the creativity of the design, artistic technique (including the medium and style), and how your park reflects the lore and spirit of Blizzard Entertainment's games.
You can submit illustrations that look like theme-park maps, compose your park to look like a screenshot from a game, or create whatever kind of park you wish -- the only limit is your imagination. Winning entries will be featured on Blizzard Entertainment websites around the world as well as at BlizzCon 2009, being held in Anaheim, California on August 21 and 22.
The park designer who most creatively incorporates the StarCraft, Warcraft, and Diablo universes will receive a Wacom Cintiq 12WX Digitizing Tablet, a pair of StarCraft II beta keys, and more. See below for more prize details, or check out the official rules for more information.

The main award of course being starcraft 2 beta keys amongst a few other things

Grand Prize – Wacom Cintiq 12WX Digitizing Tablet, Echoes of War: The Music of Blizzard Entertainment, and two (2) StarCraft II beta keys

Best StarCraft Area or Theme Park1st Prize – Echoes of War: The Music of Blizzard Entertainment and two (2) StarCraft II beta keys

Best Warcraft Area or Theme Park1st Prize – Echoes of War: The Music of Blizzard Entertainment and two (2) StarCraft II beta keys

Best Diablo Area or Theme Park1st Prize – Echoes of War: The Music of Blizzard Entertainment and two (2) StarCraft II beta keys

Official rules available here

Way to go Valve

Here is a funny post I was reading on Valve's Team Fortress 2 Blog:

You Have Failed Me
February 18, 2009 - TF Announcer


It saddens me that despite my best efforts to instruct and better you, some of you insist on finding new ways to fail.

We have sounded the alert and released a quick fix for an exploit that some unscrupulous players were using to wield items on invalid classes. I have considered an appropriate punishment for the good-for-nothings responsible for this horrendous breach of conduct. Death, of course - but death is too good for disappointments such as these. Instead, their unlockable items have been removed for a month.

To the majority of you who did not see fit to cheat, you have my congratulations: I await the countless other ways you will inevitably disappoint me in the future.

Yours,
TF Announcer

For those of you who havent played Team Fortress 2, some classes can unlock special items by playing enough to reach certain milestones. This can permanently change the way you play a particular class.

Blizzards new MMO?

This news is a few days old, but apparently Jeff Kaplan, Lead Designer for Blizzard's World of Warcraft, is leaved the WOW team to head up their next unnamed MMO. I'm kinda surprised to hear Blizzard starting up a new online game. Granted, which the exception of Warcraft 3, which was kinda weak (Yes, I said that out loud) Blizzard pretty much delivers quality every time. In this case however, with 11 million subscribers playing wow, I have to wonder if they will basically compete against themselves. Oh well, we'll see what happens.

Until then, I want Starcraft 2......

And for those of you that want to see it, heres his original post in the WoW forums:

I wanted to take a moment to let the community know that I’ve switched roles here at Blizzard to work on our upcoming, unannounced MMO. World of Warcraft has been such a central part of my life these past six and a half years, and it’s success would not have been possible without the tremendous community around it, so I wanted to say thank you to all our players who’ve shared this amazing experience with us so far. Also, while I have served as the spokesperson and Game Director for World of Warcraft on Wrath of the Lich King, by no means would WoW be where it is today without the dedicated team that we have in place. The WoW development team is comprised of some of the most talented and experienced game developers in the world, and it was an absolute honor to serve amongst them, and they will continue to make WoW better than ever. I still plan to be very involved with the future course of World of Warcraft, but will leave the day to day operations of World of Warcraft to my partners in crime, Tom Chilton and J. Allen Brack.

When all is said and done, WoW is still my favorite game. I play it every day. None of that passion is gone. If anything, it fuels the challenge of making our next MMO even better. We know we have some big shoes to fill. So thank you to everyone who has been so supportive over the years, and likewise, thanks to those who have given us pointed feedback on all areas of the game. Without all of the feedback and participation, WoW would not be the game that it has grown to be. Azeroth truly belongs to you and we’re lucky to have shared in your journey. And as always, I’ll still be lurking on the forums and in the game.
Mostly, I just wanted to say thanks. It has been an absolute honor.

Jeffrey Kaplan

Hooooooooooorrraaayyyyyy!!!!!!!!!!

For years now I have waited for someone to come out with a pc game where you take control of a mafia family. Though games like Mafia from Digital Illusions were fantastic, they did not include the economic aspect of it. Setting up rackets, taking out rivals operations while guarding your own.

Then suddenly today I come across this description of Godfather 2:

"Be a true Don as you coordinate all the action using a 3D world map: survey your turf, place defenses on businesses, analyze crime patterns, identify new illicit racket monopolies, and choose the target of your next attack. As the Don of a family, there are a ton of great strategic choices to makein the Godfather 2 while you take on the action --for now, we'll focus on Monopolies.

Monopolies are a grouping of rackets that "run" the same criminal activity. Controlling (and defending) a monopoly comes with both a monetary bonus and game perk benefits making them key to owning the map, gaining wealth and amassing power. Monopolies can be local to one city or span across the cities. Larger monopolies made up of many targets, spanning multiple cities are obviously more difficult but offer greater rewards. Some rackets include:

Fronts: These are the extortable legitimate businesses of the game. In addition to their extortion payout they also launder money.

· Small Rackets: These are venues containing an illegal criminal activity and usually disguised as something legitimate.

· Medium Racket: At this level the racket is operating at a large scale, and so it has many guards. Penetrating these venues requires at least 2 crew members to get the job done. Defending the venue takes some substantial muscle.

· Large Rackets: The largest of the racket nodes, these venues (although few) bring in massive amounts of cash. They require a full crew to get the job complete. A small army is required to successfully defend a hub once it is owned.

Now I can die a happy man

Game News. Some good, Some probably not

Shacknews Acquired by Gamefly

Apparently Shacknews has been purchased. One of the founders,Steve Gibson, will be departing immediately, while co founder Maarten Goldstein will remain on for "the short term.

Though there was speculation in Forbes that Gamefly might want to use shackfiles to launch a digital distribution service, Gamefly exec Sean Spector dismissed it saying:

"...there's a large need for quality content. Shacknews fills that need, delivering great news and features and a vibrant community. We can leverage a lot of things we have internally, like our infrastructure and resources, and help expand it."

I'm sure this site will also not be used to over-advertise and push big budget titles onto an unknowing market before people realize how mediocre they are. In fact, I'm sure that Sean Spector, or Mr. Spector to his employees, or Spector, as his identical uniform wearing minions undoubtedly refer to him as, is sitting in his wheelchair petting his white cat and asking himself " how can we use our infrastructure to make shacknews better?"



Rockstar announces Red Dead Redemption

Rockstar games just announceed they are making a sequel to Red Dead Revolver, a ps2 game that kicked ass, using the GTIV engine. More details as they arrive.

World of Goo

"World of Goo is a physics based puzzle / construction game. The millions of Goo Balls who live in the beautiful World of Goo don't know that they are in a game, or that they are extremely delicious."


Now how can you go wrong with a game that describes itself that way? I've been playing this game for a couple days now and it is truly one of the most unique ideas I have seen in awhile. Once again for $20 on steam, you really cant go wrong.