December 5th, 2009

For now, I’m in favor of this. Although Microsoft’s efforts with the Games For Windows Live software have done little but bring the Xbox experience to PC gamers, so have Valve’s efforts with Steamworks and Modern Warfare 2. And if anyone’s capable of muscling some marketshare away from Steam, it’s Microsoft.

I was skeptical of Stardock’s claims as well. It makes sense to me that, based on seniority alone, Direct 2 Drive’s marketshare would be larger than Impulse’s. But is Impulse’s share really so small that it doesn’t even chart?

Happy 10th Birthday to my second favorite game of all time.

This story originally reported that Threewave was to shut down, and I’m glad to see that’s not the case. I have no affinity for their recent games, but I was an avid Threewave CTF player in Quake 3. I would hate to see them simply run out of work.

I’ve read four novels based on BioWare games and haven’t been disappointed yet, but I may skip these. Maybe. Okay, probably not.

I’ve never played a Medal of Honor game, but bully to EA for the timing of this announcement.

And Area 5, too. I hope this relaunch works out; I’ve gotten nothing but bad vibes from the idea of it until now.

To clarify, these same bans (in addition to server-specific bans) could have still happened with dedicated servers.

There’s nothing remarkable about this post except that the headline is ridiculous. But do check out all this Brink gameplay footage.

July 21st, 2009

By now, especially if you’re a listener of such gaming podcasts as A Life Well Wasted, Out of The Game or the Bitmob Mobcast, you may have caught wind of the self-titled debut album from Robert Ashley and Sam Frigard’s genre-defying band I Come to Shanghai. Robert and Sam’s labor of love was three years in the making, having co-written and co-produced each of the album’s ten tracks themselves. “Another Sunday Morning,” the song I’ve selected to feature below was, as I understand it, written foremost by Robert Ashley, and is one that I like on a personal level very much.

I Come to Shanghai is being distributed under Creative Commons with a “name your price” model at the band’s official website.