If you are one of those kids that cannot track the differences between Mojang’s upcoming tactical card/board game Scrolls and Bethesda’s series of epic open-world RPG The Elder Scrolls, you may be disappointed. Both companies have agreed to a settlement, allowing Mojang to continue using the Scrolls name for its game.
Markus “Notch” Persson tweeted his delight over the news this weekend with a “Yaaaay!.” In a follow-up tweet, Persson explained that while Bethesda will keep the “Scrolls” trademark, Mojang will be able to use the name so long as it agrees not to use it to make a game that competes directly with The Elder Scrolls series, which hasn’t been of concern in the first place.
Persson has claimed that there was no money exchanged during the settlement, except for “making sure lawyers got paid.” He said, “I’m very happy we’ve resolved the matter, but it does seem silly for me that we have a system where two companies have to waste piles of money and time and end up in a situation where nothing has changed.”
Peter Molyneux, the founder of Fable developer Lionhead Studios and creative director at Microsoft Game Studios Europe, has announced that he has decided to leave both companies in order to pursue new endeavors with an independent venture called 22 Cans.
Microsoft and Molyneux are both indicating that the separation is entirely friendly and no bridges are burned with him leaving. ”I felt the time was right to pursue a new independent venture,” Molyneux said in a statement to Kotaku. “I’d like to thank the team at Lionhead, as well as our partners at Microsoft Studios for their support, dedication and incredible work over the years.”
Microsoft returned the nice statement of Molyneux by saying that he has “made an indelible mark on the games industry and we wish him all the best of luck in his future endeavors.”
Molyneux’s career started at Bullfrog Productions, which he founded with Les Edgar in 1987. After creating hits that include Populous, Syndicate, and Dungeon Keeper, he sold the studio to Electronic Arts and founded Lionhead in 1997. At Lionhead, Molyneux has been a key figure behind high-profile games like Black & White and the fantasy series Fable. Lionhead was acquired by Microsoft in 2006, and Molyneux was promoted to creative director of Microsoft Game Studios Europe in 2009.
Molyneux hasn’t mentioned what sort of projects 22 Cans will be working on, but he did claim that he will continue to work with Lionhead as a creative consultant for the duration of development on the Xbox 360 Kinect title, Fable: The Journey. Microsoft has yet to announce who will be taking the place of Molyneux as creative director at Microsoft Game Studios Europe.
Google has been trying to up its content distribution channels for Android. Over the past two years, the platform has added dedicated stores for purchasing electronic books and movies. Google also provided its own music locker and streaming service. They are now streamlining all of these into a unified service for purchasing, syncing, and streaming media content.
Their newest cloud-based media platform is titled Google Play. Google has stated that Google Play is a comprehensive digital entertainment service that can handle all of the user’s content needs. The Google Play store has already launched on the Web. Users will soon be able to obtain and consume media on the Android platform.
The original and traditional Android Market will be replaced with a Google Play application. Android’s official video, music, and e-book applications will be rebranded and tweaked to integrate with their new Google Play service. Users will be able to access their previous purchases through the service and get their purchased content onto new devices.
You have probably heard about really strange marriage proposals over the years. Perhaps you, a good friend, or even your parents have a very interesting or unique way that they proposed to their loved one. Well, I think there is an even stranger way to propose that you may not have heard about until now.
This proposal happened on March 2nd, 2012, and it happened on the Nintendo 3DS. Yes, marrying the guy that proposed is better than a Triforce powered Ramen Starship. It has 19,730 views on YouTube as of me posting this, but I would think it will receive many more.
While many people are hating on them for doing it this way and being “geeks” or “nerds,” there are many more likes than dislikes. Many people respect their right to be happy and propose however he wanted to and felt like it would be the most memorable. If they are into the 3DS and technology, then all the power to them for doing it. I wish them the best of luck in their marriage!
Developer Irrational Games has finally revealed that BioShock Infinite will be available for the Xbox 360, PS3, as well as the PC in North America on October 16, 2012. An international release will take place on October 19, 2012.
President and Creative Director of Irrational Games, Ken Levine, stated that the upcoming title has been “our sole focus for the last four years,” and will be the culmination of a “vision for a follow-up that dwarfed the original in scope and ambition.” The 2K Marin-developed BioShock 2 was released in early 2010. This was done without Irrational’s direct involvement.
Sony has also revealed that the PS3 version of BioShock Infinite will include a copy of the original BioShock on the same Blu-Ray disc as the new.
Bioshock Infinite takes the “highly regarded series” in a whole new direction, shifting the scenario from the “underwater, libertarian haven” of Rapture to the “jingoistic, America-first flying” city of Columbia during the early 20th century. Levine stated that the game’s story was partially inspired by the recent “Occupy” movement protests, telling Reuters last November that “it’s been fascinating to watch the conflict in the game, which is based on historical conflicts, sort of become reincarnated in our times.”
Blizzard Entertainment has announced that it has chosen to reduce the size of its worldwide employment by 600 employees, a massive decrease for a company that had 4,600 employees reported in 2009. Approximately 90% of the reduction will come from areas not directly related to game development, according to the company, “limiting the impact on current projects.”
“Constant evaluation of teams and processes is necessary for the long-term health of any business,” Blizzard president and CEO Mike Morhaime said in a statement. “Over the last several years, we’ve grown our organization tremendously and made large investments in our infrastructure in order to better serve our global community. However, as Blizzard and the industry have evolved we’ve also had to make some difficult decisions in order to address the changing needs of our company.”
Morhaime, on a Blizzard Entertainment forum, posted that Blizzard “remain[s] committed to shipping multiple games this year,” including Diablo 3, Blizzard DOTA, expansions for Starcraft 2 and World of Warcraft,” as well as other unannounced projects.” Morhaime also promised more news on Diablo 3′s oft-delayed release date “in the coming weeks.”
Vox Games cited an unnamed former Blizzard employee in reporting that the reduction was focused on the customer service department, which has been streamlined to automation of many common support tasks.
Blizzard might also be responding to declining subscriber numbers for its main MMO, World of Warcraft, which has fallen from a peak over 12 million subscribers in late 2010 to 10.2 million reported in the beginning on February 2012.
Apple has officially started sending out invitations for a special media event that will take place on Wednesday, March 7 at 12 noon CST. The event will take place at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, the location in which both the original iPad and iPad 2 were announced in 2010 and 2011. The company hasn’t specified what the event will be about, but given the invitation pictured above, it’s pretty much a given that rumors will come true and Apple will indeed unveil the iPad 3.
Rumors have been going for some time now that Apple would release the iPad 3 in the first week of March, especially given the previous models being released at the same time on different years. What can we expect? Well, rumors have pointed to upgraded cameras, a possible quad-core processor, 4G/LTE support, and a high-resolution “retina” class display like the iPhone 4 and 4S have.
We will have to see what exactly Apple gives to us on March 7th, or if the iPad 3 is the only thing they have in store at least.
In 2006 and 2007, there was a growing emphasis on global warming and the effects on the planet. There were signs of acceptance, but there has been a slow but steady decline since. Now, a quarter of the public doesn’t believe that the planet has warmed up at all.
A study published in Climatic Change evaluated the impact of several potential opinion drivers: extreme weather events, public access to scientific information, media coverage, advocacy efforts, and the influence of political leaders. These polls took place between 2002 and 2010, and provided a total of 84,000 responses.
For each category, they compared them to their climate change threat index. They found no statistically significant correlation with extreme weather events, papers in Science, or oil prices. There was a minor correlation with major scientific assessments. Articles in popular science magazines and advocacy efforts, especially An Inconvenient Truth, appeared to have an effect. And of course, news media coverage came about when it was transmitting statements from political leaders, which proved to have the biggest impact.
That being said, serious action on climate change depends on a healthy economy and bipartisan agreement among politicians. There was cooperation between parties in 2007, where public agreement reached its peak on global warming. It’s a little discouraging to see how many people are paying attention to their Republican candidates, as they oppose it more often than not. It is sad that political leaders can have more impact than years of scientific research.
Now, as you may know, many people have been getting to 10th prestige level 80 on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 already. I, myself, am 6th prestige. I feel as if that’s pretty good for working at home and being around my Xbox all day, but not sitting there and playing nonstop.
Well, if you’re wondering what the images are at the top of this post, they are brand new prestiges. To keep the players and community interested, Robert Bowling and the team have decided to add 5 new prestiges into the game. These were added on February 21st for Xbox 360, when Content Drop 3 was added for Xbox Elite Premium members. The prestiges will be added February 28th to PS3, when Content Drop 1 & 2 (Piazza and Liberation) are delivered.
The decision came after many people were hitting 10th prestige, some even more than once with the option to reset your stats for a prestige token once you’re there. There are also rumors floating around that once a pre-determined number of people reach 15th prestige level 80, they will consider releasing 5 additional prestiges. The images of these prestige emblems were leaked, and are the exact same as the images at the top (besides the obvious Roman Numeral changes).
A free porn video website, titled YouPorn, has very many subscribers. In fact, they are one of the top 100 websites in the world. If you’re curious, Google is #1 and Facebook is #2. Last night, at least 6,400 of the subscriber’s passwords were exposed in a data dump on Pastebin, pairing email addresses with plain text passwords. The list of YouPorn logins is thought to have been captured from a public-facing server, making YouPorn a bigger share of the blame for permitting “lazy” security.
More often than not, people like to keep their enthusiasm for erotica and porn a secret. Having their email address connected with the YouPorn site certainly doesn’t help things and is a huge breach of privacy if you were one of the unlucky 6,400 and counting. Even if those affected don’t care, there is still the danger of someone using the plain-text password to access other accounts, since it’s very common for people to use the same passwords to login with multiple different Websites.
The emails and passwords dump was done by an unknown hacker. YouPorn has shut down the breached server, but the damage is definitely already done. Portions of the list have been published around the Internet. OZ Dump Centa divvied up the email addresses by provider. They found that the largest portion of YouPorn accounts were linked to Hotmail addresses, followed by Gmail accounts. Technology researcher Ashkan Soltani even took the liberty of making a word cloud of the most popular stolen passwords. YouPorn has not made a public statement about the breach, but the data-leak is a reminder that passwords shouldn’t be repeated across logins for different sites, especially those with important information.
