Here’s a roundup of today’s news found elsewhere on the internet:
GoW III producer says “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” (vg247) - God of War III’s senior producer, Steve Caterson, has weighed in on comments and suggestions that Dante’s Inferno screams of Kratos, and honestly, he didn’t have much to say about it.
Speaking with Industry Gamers, Caterson pretty much just shrugs it off and instead talked about how much work went into making God of War III.
“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but from our standpoint, we’re running our own race,” said Caterson. “We’re trying to outdo ourselves and we’re our own worst critics and we often beat ourselves up.
“We take a lot of pride in what we do and we want to do the best we can on the games we make and we don’t want to leave anything on the table. We want everyone to have the same experience, one that we all agree on, and when you put the game down we want to be able to look you in the eye and say, ‘We gave it our all.’
“For us, it’s always been about previous games we’ve worked on. Nobody came into the office one day with a game someone else made and said, ‘Look at this, we need to have this in our game.’ It’s always been about outdoing ourselves; with God of War II, we had to outdo the Hydra and I think we did it with the Colossus battle, and this time, we had to be even bigger than that with God of War III.
“I’d like to think we succeeded.”
The world will find out if Sony Santa Monica did indeed succeed come March 16 in the US and March 19 in the UK.
After which, the team will deservedly be taking a break and playing videogames.
Rumor: Lucasarts to announce Monkey Island 2 revamp next week (vg247) - Rumor has it that Lucasarts plans to announce Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge with new graphics and audio.
According to sources close to Kotaku, the title may even be announced at GDC next week.
If the source is correct, the sequel will be hitting PS3 this time around as well.
That should make fans of the series rather pleased.
The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition hit XBL, iPhone, and PC last summer.
Australia: R18+ discussion paper nets over 55,000 submissions (vg247) - Looks like over 55,000 people have responded to the R18+ discussion paper in Australia by the February 28 deadline.
According to Home Affairs Minister Brendan O’Connor, the response shows a high level of interest in the rating, much to the chagrin of the Australian Christian Lobby, who is trying to block the rating due to what it feels is a connection between mature games and real-world violence.
“We believe that gaming industry claims that such a link is unproven are reminiscent of the tactics of tobacco companies in questioning the link between smoking and lung cancer,” the lobby says in its March newsletter.
We agree. For example: Manhunt 2 on Wii made us more mentally ill than our pack-a-day habit. Enough to want to hurt something – but only the gaming disc because we felt slighted by the content.
Anyhow, Grow Up Australia’s combined efforts with EB Games were behind the large amount of submissions, and Aussie gamers can still sign the EveryonePlays’ petition at their local GAME store.
The discussion over whether to add an R18+ ratings category is scheduled for April, but it will happen after state elections in South Australia and Tasmania on March 20.
We’re keeping our fingers crossed for all the Bruces and Shelias over there. Keep hope alive.
Javelins, Zerg Rushes, Ninja Looting and Other Social Dilemmas (Kotaku) - It's there, and you know how to use it. It's an exploit or a glitch or some imbalance in the AI. Morally, it's wrong. But what if everyone else is doing it? Or just the potential for them doing it?
Jamie Madigan, well known as the gamer with the Ph.D in psychology, tackles an adaptation of the classic "Prisoner's Dilemma " by applying it to glitching. Writing on his personal blog (and also in his columns for GameSetWatch and Gamasutra), Madigan examines what choices and outcomes - foreseen and unforeseen - govern a gaming community's reaction to the presence of a trump exploit, like Modern Warfare 2's notorious Javelin Glitch, so disproportionately powerful that using it got players banned even though no modding was involved.
The conclusion? This is why you game among friends. Hardly a surprise, but one's conscience can't be the only guide. Some accountability to the victim of the glitching is also useful. And I'd argue it's why multiplayer-heavy games bear a higher QA burden, because glitching and exploits that destroy the fun have the potential drive people offline and to a shorter experience with the game, if not to another title altogether. Self-policing does occur, but the longer the exploits persist, the more someone will succumb to temptation.
Read Madigan’s full article here.
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