Goodwill

2K Loves Me, Loves Me Not, Loves Me!

Martyn Zachary Leave a comment

Ever since the BioShock 2 launch, 2K Games have been giving PC players high blood pressure and ulcers thanks to a laundry list of problems with the game, ranging from its Games for Windows Live integration and DirectX issues to the infamous “Rapture Metro” map pack, giving much credence to the view that the game was effectively left to rot on the platform.

To add insult to injury, this sentiment was already firmly established before the publisher’s wishy-washy approach to “The Protector Trials” and “Minerva’s Den” DLC packs, which were originally slated for – and then later announced cancelled, only to move back to production – the PC. 2K community manager Elizabeth Tobey sums up the news in a sentence: “We have resumed development on all three and they will be coming to PC.” 1)http://forums.2kgames.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1254568#post1254568

Although the aforementioned – plus an additional patch – are now back in production, the only real response to this whole affair can but resemble this, especially after Irrational Games head honcho Ken Levine jumped to a profanity-laden PR save at Kotaku: “If you want to know the future of gaming, buy a PC. And pay attention. Because above all, that thing on your desk is a crystal ball.” 2)http://kotaku.com/5675559/the-future-of-pc-gaming-according-to-the-lead-creator-of-bioshock (more…)

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The Not-So Silver Lining

Martyn Zachary 1 Comment
Lost at the Sea

Fan games based on more or less commercially viable licenses have always faced the unenviable task of navigating the stormy, abbreviated seas of C&D and DMCA all the while keeping a low enough profile to avoid the aforementioned corporate shallows, at the same time maintaining a public enough face to attract necessary fan interest.

Some projects, like Indiana Jones & The Fountain of Youth and AGDInteractive’s remakes have surprisingly managed to stay afloat; others, like the very latest target of this type of license injustice, The Silver Lining, a King’s Quest fan game, are fish food:

In 2005, Phoenix Online Studios received a Cease & Desist letter from Vivendi Universal, the owners of the King’s Quest IP, in regards to our work on The Silver Lining. We complied with the request, and over the months that followed, we were able to work out a non-commercial fan license with Vivendi that allowed us to continue our work on the game.…

Recently, however, ownership of the Sierra IP changed hands and became the property of Activision. After talks and negotiations in the last few months between ourselves and Activision, they have reached the decision that they are not interested in granting a non-commercial license to The Silver Lining, and have asked that we cease production and take down all related materials on our website. 1)http://www.tsl-game.com/

Closed Due to Tragedy

The Silver Lining was eight years in the making, and while this final blow in a long uphill battle must be a massive, massive disappointment to the members of the development team, it is also exactly that to the most dedicated fans of Roberta Williams’ classic adventure series; is it not the most interested of fans, after all, that come to develop, find out about and care for these underground fan games?

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Rockstar Will Be Rockstar

Martyn Zachary 1 Comment

The hot topic of the week was Rockstar’s Tiger-like, sudden fall from PR grace. The boulder started rolling downhill on the 7th, when a thick and elaborate blog entry, “Wives of Rockstar San Diego employees have collected themselves” was published at Gamasutra. The post was a call to arms by the wives of Rockstar employees seeking to highlight the workplace injustices perceived to exist at the studio. The post gained considerable momentum in the press and ultimately produced a circulated internal response on the 15th.

But that’s not really all: Springing up like mushrooms after the rain, we have actually received a barrage of various reports more or less in accordance with the Rockstar wives’ complaints. To recap, we have already discovered the dazzling Red Dead Dedemption (on the left), very much awaited here at The Slowdown, to have had an extremely arduous development path. We have also heard how there are other issues afoot at Rockstar San Diego and how Rockstar quietly settled a telling class action suit with over 100 employees the April of last year.

In addition, we have read subsequent allegations of how Max Payne 3, in development at Rockstar Vancouver, is being similarly mismanaged. We’ve written about Max’s questionable Brazilian wax before, so you can consider that more fuel for the fire. Be as it may, yesterday, Rockstar finally officially responded, though in veiled and indirect fashion, to the swirling sea of speculation above.

Their weapon of choice: A series of wallpapers.

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Dark Forces, Rogue Leaders and Goodwill

Martyn Zachary 1 Comment

LucasArts recently re-released their long-running, beloved Jedi Knight series digitally on Steam to a rather ecstatic response to boot; only, a major wrench got thrown in the gears when the parties responsible failed to appropriately revise the games for the most current generation of operating systems. As a result, the three earliest releases – Dark Forces, Jedi Knight and its expansion disc, Mysteries of the Sith – suffer from instability, incompatibility, crashes, bugs and other lesser issues.

Steam Ad for Jedi Knight Collection
Steam Ad for Jedi Knight Collection

This is a rather shocking turn of events after a wildly successful reintroduction of the classic LucasArts back catalogue to audiences old and new, and indeed strikingly qualitatively different from the previous batch of releases, especially so when taking into account that fixes to some of the aforementioned issues are in fact readily available! For instance, players who already own the games on CD can simply extract the original wave audio for their background music to work (thanks Richard!).

It is only natural, however, to find the company trying to think up ways to maintain the newfound revenue flow and subsequently benefit from the excitement caused by these re-releases. Therefore, it’s also all the more disappointing that oversights such as the aforementioned might considerably affect the public perception of the company’s current endeavours.

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