Small tidbit concerning the seemingly increasing hostilities between EA and Activision; started of course with the fiasco that is still unfolding between Activision and Infinity Ward ex-staff members Vince Zampella and Jason West. More on that HERE, HERE and  HERE.

Yesterday though Activision, through press release, boasted its "impressive sales" of the Modern Warfare 2 Stimulus Map Pack and how the company is lifting its quarterly fiscal outlook.

EA, being Activision's well known competitor, took a quick potshot at its excited rival; Jeff Brown, EA's director of corporate communications quipped this to Kotaku.com: "This is kind of like announcing: The race horse I shot last month has won the Triple Crown !"

EA of course is currently backing Zampella and West along with their new company Respawn Studios through the EA Partners program, which allows the two canned dev heads to own their IPs that they create...the reason this whole mess started in the first place (Infinity Ward vs. Activision).

Oh well....maybe they can make a sitcom out of this or something. This is entertaining, but add the guys from Harold & Kumar and SNL and then we'll have a good show. What do you think?

-Armand

I'm Literally About to Tweet History...

I want you to think about what I just said....tweet history. No, no one died or no cure for cancer. The simple act of tweeting is now considered "history". The United States Library of Congress....yeah....believes that the day to day incessant ramblings and ravings of the general population deserve to be immortalized in their normally exclusive archives.

Apparently intellectuals believe that this is a good idea as well; according to them, normal means of information conveyance have depicted people of a higher stature, or for lack of a better description, people with something at least semi-coherent and meaningful to say. But now, everyone from the noted child molester, murderers and general scum of the planet have their thoughts filtered in to the general public's; which isn't much different either. I don't know how many times I've gone into my Twitter account to check CNN's or the New York Time's headlines of the day and seen 14,000 'tweets' about someone's life sucking, too much "drama", what time the Kardashians start or that little "Tweet-king" himself, Justin Bieber (I didn't know who or what he was until I was alerted to him when I yelled "WHO THE F*** IS THIS GUY?!" in Book's-a-Million.) who is for some reason a trending topic for the last 6 months.

Apparently the Library has been doing stuff like this for a decade or so, since Web Sites began the to enter the fray as a useful and reliable source for information. The Tweets will be taking their place right by the information gathered from the Net during events such as presidential elections and the 9/11 attacks and the Library has amassed more than 167 terabytes of digital material, more than what the text of the 21 million books they've collected would equal.

This is not the material I want to be seeing when I'm excavating what's left of Washington, D.C. after the world ends. I don't see how the everyday tweets of the general (and IMO uneducated) masses are an "immense impact on culture and history." (<- That came from the director of communications for the Library if you can believe it.)

Am I the only sane person left in this country or are there other survivors of the Stup-ocalypse left out there? Calling all survivors, we must collect our own knowledge to weather the coming storm....hopefully, we will outlive the attrocities that will soon be commited and re-educate the remaining populace with actual knowledge.....knowledge that can be used to re-populate the Earth with people that aren't brain damaged at birth from the stupidity consumed by their moronic parents....

Just my take on the matter; I could be crazy and this could be the best thing to ever happen to the human race....or it could be another reason EVERY country in the world thinks we're a bunch of over-weight, uneducated hypocritical idiots. Just saying...

-Armand

More Infinity Ward Staff Check Out

Yep...more of them. I don't know what to say because I really believe its the right thing for them to get out from under Activision but the gamer in me is saying NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

Today Mark Grigsby, the team's Lead Animator, and Paul Messerly, the Lead Character Animator, have both left Infinity Ward. Grigsby had been with the company since 2005 and Messerly had been there since the formation; he worked with Medal of Honor's dev group 2015 Inc. but moved in 2002.

If you don't know off the bat who Mark Grigsby is, think back to Modern Warfare number one. A certain Staff Sergeant Griggs come up? Yeah, Grigsby was the inspiration and voice actor for that character; he also was the one rapping at the end of that game. That's actually probably the only rap song that I own...

More and more devs dropping, Activision, couldn't you part with a few million? You'd have made it back ten-fold when Modern Warfare 3 dropped. Oh well....

-Armand

XboxLive Used to Fight Crime?

XboxLive is the major gaming network in which millions of people can get together, party up and game until the cows come home. A majority of the people on Xbox are, for lack of a better word, strange, but that doesn't mean we're not moral or just! After perusing Kotaku.com, I discovered a couple of articles about gamers who "save the day":

One was very serious involving a possible school shooting that was thwarted by several concerned party members in a game lobby. One of the people, disgruntled by his failing grades as a senior in school spoke very descriptively about fellow schoolmates that he would target when he shot up the school and disconnected suddenly when questioned about it by his fellow party members. Whether he was just messed up and joking or not one Canadian party member in British Columbia alerted the Royal Canadian Mounted Police who then investigated and with the help of good ol' Microsoft Law Enforcement, tracked the individual to San Antonio, Texas where he was arrested. Later it was found that he was very serious; intending to get weapons from a friend in the Marines and considered details such as  how long S.W.A.T would take to arrive and had a list of names of people in particular.He also commented that he wanted to be remembered forever. XBL community 1, criminals 0.

Another was....particularly strange, but not uncommon I'm afraid. Apparently 24 year old Ryan E. Donker of Portsmouth, VA admitted to asking for nude pictures from a 13 year old Arkansas boy on multiple occassions. He was extradited to Arkansas under felony charges and $20,000 bond. Apparently Fayetteville Police had recorded several of these conversations where Donker tried to solicit the boy but thanks to the good ol' Xbox he was apprehended and put away for a bit. XBL community 2, crimials 0.

The last one I read was more recent; tampering with a witness. Yeah. People will do anything over XBL it seems. Apparently Anythony Hayward of Hamden, Conneticut was taken in under charges or "tampering with a witness, intimitdating a witness and two counts of second-degree harassment"; all commited through XboxLive messages. "I wouldn't laugh 2 much U a dead man walking" and "Rats die slow" were among the messages sent to a material witness in a case against Hayward  who was out on bail under gun and drug possession charges. He was taken in again and hasn't posted his new bail. XBL community 3, criminals 0.

I think we have a winner!!! At any rate, this shows two things; there are some messed up people on XBL, but there are good people who report things that really really need to be reported. Always be observant and report psychos to the proper authorities; better safe than sorry folks!

-Armand

Yup, More of IW Ditched.....

Yeah that's right. Another four people have dropped from Infinity Ward's staff roster:

Lead Designers Steve Fukuda and Zied Reike have left after being with the company since its founding days working on the Medal of Honor series.

Programmer Rayme Vinson as well as Lead Artist Chris Cherubini have also been confirmed to have left the studio for good.

These are just the latest in the string of devs jumping ship after the canning of studio heads Jason West and Vince Zampella who were fired under acusations from Activision of "delaying production of Modern Warfare 3." I don't know about them but I figure they've got more important issues on their hands.

-Armand

The End of a Great Company?

The "Fall of Duty" as most people now refer to it is getting pretty deep now. It started way back when Activision canned Vince Zampella and Jason West and now has come to more talented devs just up and leaving Infinity Ward.

HERE is a past post I did about why this all started and HERE is the second in the timeline confirming the cause. Where we fall now is definitely turbulent waters for the company that Activision "[looks] forward to continuing work with Infinity Ward's deep bench of proven talent..."

About a month after the initial canning, Infinity Ward lost two more: Todd Alderman who is a Lead Designer for Modern Warfare and Francesco Gigliotti, a Lead Software Engineer.

After this bit, Zampella and West formed Respawn Studios, a company that will own the IPs they create and are working with EA Partners for publishing and distribution. A swift kick in the nads to Activision in my opinion.

After the forming of Respawn Entertainment, Activision made this comment: "This agreement comes as no surprise to Activision given the myriad of improper activities detailed in the cross-complaint filed on Friday against [Zampella and Vince]...." I don't think Vince and Zampella did anything out of bounds and that Activision is seriously off its rocker if they think they'll be able to put out a title like Modern Warfare 3 and have it surpass MW2.

Now we see three people leaving the company at the same time; Programmer Jon Shiring, Senior Animator Bruce Ferriz and Lead Designer Mackey McCandlish are all no longer employed under Infinity Ward/Activision. None of the three have said exactly why they left, nor have they commented on what their next steps are; except for Ferriz who has confirmed to have been picked up by Santa-Monica's Big Red Button Entertainment for an undisclosed project.

With the company's devs all leaving Infinity Ward, I really wonder what's going to happen to one of the best game series' I've ever played; not only the game but the company that consistently put out amazing titles for all to enjoy. I wonder what Activision has to say now.

-Armand

WTF South Korea?

I am what one would call....a gaming addict. I've played several hundred games and own about that many as well. I've found that there are a lot of people like me in America, we love playing video games and most of the time we're damn good at it. Well, the people in South Korea are so fond of gaming that the government is actually going to begin imposing limits on its underage gamers; a mandatory 6 hour blackout.

The new policy is going to "cut off online gaming" to some relatively well known games such as Maple Story and several others. In full swing the cut will effect roughly 19+ well known Korean games. How does one enforce this type of policy? Simple, if someone is spending lengthy amounts of time on the net, just slow down the internet to the particular household in question until its relatively stalled out.

The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (the ones organizing this craziness) isn't completely against gaming though. In fact, they're picking and choosing the games that will be part of the cut off; popular MMO Lineage won't be but the games Dungeon & Fighter and Dragon Nest, among others, will be. They're not completely cruel either, the gamers get to choose their cut out time period; midnight to 6 a.m., 1 a.m. to
7 a.m. or 2 a.m. to 8 a.m.

Not a bad idea in my opinion. In all actuallity, if the person has a job or goes to school they're normally sleeping at that time of the night/morning. Even if they aren't, like myself, they normally knock out around 2 and don't get up till 7:30 a.m. for work at 8 or 8:30 leaving really no time to hop online and do anything meaningful. I don't want that to happen Stateside though, I enjoy the occassional super gaming binge where I play from when I get home until work the next day, but at the same time, it would probably help me sleep if I couldn't play anything on the internet....there's always C&C Generals campaign though.

-Armand

Comcast vs. FCC - Round 2.....Comcast Wins?!

I'm sure most people heard about the little fight the FCC had with Comcast back in 2008. If you didn't, here's the gist of it:
The FCC wants everyone in the U.S. to have a similar experience when surfing the web, the only restrictions they have are their own and no "legal content" blocked by the ISP. This is pretty much called Net Neutrality and I'll be damned if everyone on the web doesn't like this concept. Well, Comcast doesn't like it. They don't like it so much in fact that they wanted to block their customers from using the popular sharing site BitTorrent back in 2008. The FCC jumped in and stopped them in their tracks, effectively banning companies from blocking broadband customers access to BitTorrent.

-Source: Kotaku.com

Well, today, the federal appeals court ruled against the FCC and is allowing Comcast to do as they wish with their customer's service. One can only imagine the amount of people who are going to switch ISP's because of this decision. They haven't done so yet but I'm pretty sure that the ban-hammer for BitTorrent is coming pretty soon and when it does the internet will be in an uproar. I myself would be switching, not because I use BitTorrent, (which I actually don't), but for the sheer principle of the matter. The government for once wants to do something that we'd actually like and appreciate but as usual, some monopolistic minded company wants otherwise.

-Armand

Infinity Ward, Where Are You Going?!?!

Well there is more news now about Infinity Ward and its not looking too bright. According to Kotaku.com, (Activision in their quest to rule the gaming world), has been "delaying paying Infinity Ward employees their royalties" in order to keep the developers from jumping ship after the fiasco with studio heads Vince Zampella and Jason West. Yeah, seriously. Apparently IW personnel are paid regular or "low" salaries but receive ridiculous royalties to balance it out, which is completely understandable considering since its release, Modern Warfare 2 has raked in more than a billion dollars in overall sales.

After the studio heads were canned, Activision began imposing its iron will upon our favorite devs, but that's not stopping some of them from booking; a month later Mr. Todd Alderman who is a Lead Designer for Modern Warfare and deeply involved with the multiplayer and story that we've all come to enjoy, is gone, along with Mr. Francesco Gigliotti, IW's Lead Software Engineer. Both have been with IW for 8 years and 7 years respectfully. Right now it's up in the air as to why they both left but it seems as though they both resigned and weren't canned.

-Source info: Kotaku.com

I don't know what Activision is trying to pull here but I can only forsee suffering for their profits in the end; the very thing they're trying so hard to maintain through all this. I can't fathom as to why they won't pay out the royalties that IW so rightly deserves. Does this spell the end for Infinity Ward as we know it? With four of the main people who made the company and games we know what they were, I can only assume so. Adieu Infinity Ward, I knew thee well.

-Armand

Video Games, A Dental Cash Cow?

I'm not one who's prone to go out of my way to do anything. In fact, the less I do the better I feel at the end of the day. Most of my daily accomplishments come from my daily gaming; to which I owe my amazing hand-eye coordination and lack of money. Hell, while playing I may enjoy a Pop-Tart or if its that time, I'll have a full meal between boss battles or matches. One thing I always make time for in the morning and before I hit the hay is brushing my teeth. It may sound silly to bring up here but I assure you, this is totally serious business.

According to a study done by the University of Iowa poor oral hygiene can come from playing video games! Apparently kids and teens between the ages of 12-16 have dietary habits associated with gaming on consoles or computers and conducive to tooth decay. I'm sorry but what?! I don't know about the rest of the U.S. but I'm pretty sure that kids will eat anything if it: 1) Tastes good, 2) Is sweet, 3) They can get their hands on it or 4) Can nick it when their parents are looking. THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH VIDEO GAMES!!!

I am sick and tired of gamers being singled out as the cause for school shootings or people dropping out of school, getting fat or having to get a filling. This is absolutely ridiculous. Everything that someone does isn't because of what their pasttime is! I would just as quickly grab a glass of water as I would a Capri Sun pouch and a friggin' granola bar just the same as a Pop-Tart! It just depends on what I want at that particular moment and if I'd eaten anything else that day. Everything someone does is of their own free will. If the kid is too goddamn lazy to walk to the kitchen and grab some milk rather than a Coke its their own, and the PARENT FOR BUYING IT, fault. If the parents didn't leave the kids alone to do as they please and smack 'em if they step out of line, I guarantee you'd find healthy, fit, pleasant to be around children who smile with a mouth full of pearly whites.....

People need to get their heads out of their asses and really start re-evaulating their lives before they start blaming it on a simple form of entertainment. That's my rant for the day. Goddamn studies...always pissing me off....

-Armand

Oh iPad...so sad....

I'm not going to lie and say I wasn't excited for the revealing of the iPad. I'd say that I was downright giddy when Steve Jobs called his little conference and began to introduce the iPad. I was giddy up until I saw it actually. And the more he talked about it, the less excited I became.

When I imagined the iPad, I had pictured this awesome slim tablet that had a camera and mic built into the front, Macromedia Flash capability, huge screen, multi-tasking and decent price point. What we all got was a giant iPod Touch.

There is actually little separating the iPad from the Touch. Key differences are the size and power behind it but it is no where near a computer. It has a 9.7 inch diagonal screen that will probably encounter more damage and cleaning issues that the iPhone or iPod Touch do. It utilizes Apple's groundbreaking multi-touch capabilities but it still has the same mini-dock and layout as its smaller counterparts. The battery on the other hand is amazing for the device; it sports a ten hour span for audio, video or just surfing the web and e-mails. Also, depending on whether you want just Wi-Fi or 3G + Wi-Fi is another matter, (AT&T I believe is the one doing the 3G plans separately.)

The price point I feel would be reasonable if it just had more...

Wi-Fi only

$499 - 16GB

$599 - 32GB

$699 - 64GB

Wi-Fi + 3G

$629 - 16GB

$729 - 32GB

$829 - 64GB

See? Not too bad but with the lack of current features I feel like the best idea is to wait until the 2nd generation of iPad is released.

LACK OF FLASH SUPPORT!!! Why don't you listen Apple? It works on your computers but you can't make it or let it work on your devices? I don't know how many sites I can't go to because there's no Flash on my phone. I could let go of all my other vices with this device if it had Flash. I would wait in line for two days if it had Flash support.

With a release date set in stone of April 3rd, I don't know what the initial wave is going to be like. There are always the typical Cult of Steve people who buy every device Apple puts out, there's the people who thoroughly enjoy Apple products and have the cash to nab one at the get go, there's the people who will get one when they have the dough so they look cool or the people like me who are horribly skeptical and question the product to make sure it fits my needs. In my honest opinion, I give the iPad a preview review of 2.5/5. Sorry Steve.

-Armand

Farmville Gets Another One...

Ever been so addicted to a game that it made you late for work, school or date? Maybe stayed up all night playing and after a two hour power nap you were at it again? Maybe you were so addicted to it that you played it at work or school? Maybe you were so into the game that you got fired from a political seat of power....?

Yeah that's what I said. Fired. For playing Farmville during a meeting at work. Bulgarian politician Dimitar Kerin now has to write that on his resumé after being voted off the city council for the region of Plovdiv, Bulgaria's second largest city.

Although he was the only one fired, he wasn't the only one playing; when confronted about it, he pointed fingers at other members who play it as well. His main defense was that "he was only level 40" while one of his now ex-co-members was level 46 and "should be fired instead". But after member Todor Hristov commented that Kerin be removed because he "needs more time for his virtual farm" and a quick vote, Kerin is now unemployed. Man, that's weak.

-Source - G4TV's The Feed

-Armand

Im in ur PAX stealin' ur codez, btw not coming to court kthxbai.

Well, more often than not, when faced with a difficult decision, people seem to take the stupider choice. So is the case with Justin D. May, 20 from Delaware who didn't show in court today.

Well what could he have done you ask? May, attended the first annual PAX East this weekend where a multitude of avid gamers reveled in their geekiness and played demos and checked out company booths. While everyone else was taking in the sights and sounds, May was faced with a difficult decision: Do I act like a normal person and play the games I paid to play.....or do I attempt to steal the code for Atomic Games' upcoming shooter "Breach"? Guess which one he picked?

After staking out the booth where the game was being showcased, May picked the opportune moment to nick the code when the employee guarding the laptop containing the code had to hit the john. He then proceeded to connect his laptop to theirs and began copying the game code. Fourtunately there are observant people with common sense there and a tester noticed that May was hovering over the company computer with a cord running to his. Only getting his hands on roughly 14mb out of the 2gb of code he took off when he was confronted and later taken into custody.

Here he made a good decision; he didn't lie about attempting to take the code. But, he also made a bad decision, he attempted to bribe the cops with $100 if they let him go.....this guy would be perfect for the old mini-show "Good Idea, Bad Idea."

He was taken in under the charges of "larceny over $250 and buying, selling or receiving stolen trade secrets." The first brings either a $25,000 fine or five years and the second yields either a $500 fine and two years or five years. Atomic Games told police that the game code was worth an estimated $6 million but was later told that the exact price was unknown but was in the millions.

He posted his bail of $200 in cash and when he was supposed to appear in court today, he didn't show......bad idea. At any rate, if you have any info contact Boston Crime Stoppers at 1-800-494-TIPS (8477).

-Source - Kotaku.com

I really can't comprehend why someone would even try that? Why would you attempt to steal a GAME?!?! People like him are the reasons people stereotype gamers as dangerous or troublemakers. PAX is almost like E3, a time when gamers from all over gather to witness the next step in gaming, meet with developers, get and give insight and most importantly, have a good time. May's incident has probably raised flags in the industry and now we're probably going to have to be screened just to touch a demo controller now. Good Idea, Bad Idea man.....if you have to think twice about it, you probably shouldn't do it.

-Armand

Earthquakes are bad mmmm'kay?

I wanna talk about a sort of touchy subject affecting the planet right now. Nothing too big, just the end of the world.

I've seen some weird things in my life, been able to piece them together to form a logical explanation and reason for them. All except for this. There are literally dozens of earthquakes happening every day. Yes, that is a well known fact, and most of them are minor shakes that don't even wake babies, but lately there have been more and more powerful quakes that; like in Chili are devastating heavily populated areas. Aftershocks are getting more and more violent, people have got to be noticing something is amiss.

I monitor silly things sometimes like CNN and websites that cover world news and events. Ones that cover natural disasters like earthquakes:

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/quakes_all.php

Now, if you look at this and check out CNN or anything, you'll see that there's an alarming amount of quakes occuring on every continent. I don't have any crazy 2012 theories but I honestly think something is going on downstairs that is very relavant to us the the surface.

But hey, I could be wrong (6.4-magnitude earthquake strikes near Andaman Islands, in the Indian Ocean. http://on.cnn.com/bDfRwF -CNN's Twitter @1345ish)

Well Infinity Ward.....

Today is a big day for Infinity Ward. Their debut map pack for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has been released and well....lets just say it hasn't been pretty so far. 1200MSP price point for three new maps and two that are remakes of two Modern Warfare maps is pretty ridiculous. I heard from some friends that downloading it this morning was a chore and now from what I gather, the maps won't even render for you to play on. High price for something that doesn't work....I don't know if this is a hiccup on Microsoft's end or if IW is getting sloppy. It makes me wonder what's really going on over there at IW. I can only assume it has something to do with the Activision fiasco.

I'm going to assume that you all haven't been keeping up with Infinity Ward's news so here's the information before the opinion:

Sometime March 1st, 2010 according to sources close to IW, a "bunch of bouncer-types" just showed up outside IW offices without reason and when confronted by IW staff, they virtually said nothing. It turns out that earlier that day Vince Zampella and Jason West; two bigwigs down at IW had met with their good friends Activision and hadn't been seen since. Things were supposedly tense between the two companies for a while.

According to an SEC filing earlier that morning, Activision claimed "breaches of contract and insubordination by two senior employees at IW." In fact, later that day a shot surfaced of Jason West's Facebook page to say "Jason West is drinking. Also no longer employed."

- Source for information: G4TV.com's The Feed Blog.

Alright, now that you know the facts, here comes the good stuff. What the Hell is going on? Why would Activision all of a sudden practically punch IW in the balls when they had just released the highest selling piece of entertainment in the U.S. ever? The only reason I can even comprehend what could make them do that other than money. Infinity Ward is entitled to some pretty substantial royalties from the sales of the game. Knocking out the top two of IW studios would sure as Hell save Activision some money....not like they need to. But they still did put two of their own as top dogs to replace West and Zampella so something tells me this was a long time coming.

At any rate, the two shafted Studio heads still have stake in the MW2 magic and thusly are probably the reason that the Map Pack is having some issues...... not really. Infinity Ward wouldn't be the people trying to sabotage a perfectly good game's progress *cough* ACTIVISION *cough cough* for selfish gain. At any rate there's something deeper running here that we don't know about yet but I hope this gets resolved and quickly; in situations like this the gamers are the ones who end up with the short end of the stick. And anyone will tell you when gamers get pissy, the companies don't do so well and it'll cycle like that for a while until someone working there get's their head out of their ass.

Infinity Ward is an amazing company with some very talented people working there producing some of the best games my generation has seen. I've bought every COD they put out day one and DLC (downloadable content) to boot; but in this current state where Activision is pulling the strings, I don't know if I could continue doing that.

-Armand