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Real Time Strategy (Games)

Blizzard Suing Creators of StarCraft II Hacks 385

Posted by Soulskill from the hold-your-counsel dept.
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Rock, Paper, Shotgun: "Blizzard have taken the extremely peculiar decision to ban players from playing StarCraft II for using cheats in the single-player game. This meant that, despite cheating no one but themselves, they were locked out of playing the single-player game. Which is clearly bonkers. But it's not enough for the developer. Blizzard's lawyers are now setting out to sue those who create cheats. Gamespot reports that the megolithic company is chasing after three developers of hacks for 'destroying' their online game. It definitely will be in violation of the end user agreement, so there's a case. However, it's a certain element of their claim that stands out for attention. They're claiming using the hacks causes people to infringe copyright: 'When users of the Hacks download, install, and use the Hacks, they copy StarCraft II copyrighted content into their computer's RAM in excess of the scope of their limited license, as set forth in the EULA and ToU, and create derivative works of StarCraft II.'" Blizzard used similar reasoning in their successful lawsuit against the creators of a World of Warcraft bot.

Comment Re:Movie Madness (Score 1) 186

by rirugrat (#33773366) Attached to: Lost Online Games From the Pre-Web Era
Yes, that was me who wrote it and yes, you definitely remember the game. The MM "algorithm" for casting and box office was that either really great or really terrible (ie. it's so bad it's good) matches for actors/roles made the most money. Anything in between resulted in so-so revenue.

I also wrote the non-BBS door game Wilderness Survival for MS-DOS, which was pretty popular in the late 80s too (anyone else remember playing it?). I still have the code and executables for that. Lost the code for MM.

Chris

Comment Movie Madness (Score 2, Interesting) 186

by rirugrat (#33768576) Attached to: Lost Online Games From the Pre-Web Era
I actually wrote a BBS game called Movie Madness in the late 80s that was somewhat popular on Atari ST BBS systems. You purchased scripts, cast movie stars, spent money on production and marketing and watched how much money it made each week.

Then the Academy Awards would be held and if your movie did or was cast well, you could win an Oscar and make more money (and then the whole game started over with you being able to hire better actors, spend more money, etc). A bit different than the usual fare.

Honestly, I (and 99.999999999% of the population) completely forgot about that game until I read this article.

Chris

P.S. Was also a big Galactic Empire fan too!
First Person Shooters (Games)

Gamer Plays Doom For the First Time 362

Posted by Soulskill from the new-is-relative dept.
sfraggle writes "Kotaku has an interesting review of Doom (the original!) by Stephen Totilo, a gamer and FPS player who, until a few days ago, had gone through the game's 17-year history without playing it. He describes some of his first impressions, the surprises that he encountered, and how the game compares to modern FPSes. Quoting: 'Virtual shotgun armed, I was finally going to play Doom for real. A second later, I understood the allure the video game weapon has had. In Doom the shotgun feels mighty, at least partially I believe because they make first-timers like me wait for it. The creators make us sweat until we have it in hand. But once we have the shotgun, its big shots and its slow, fetishized reload are the floored-accelerator-pedal stuff of macho fantasy. The shotgun is, in all senses, instant puberty, which is to say, delicately, that to obtain it is to have the assumed added potency that a boy believes a man possesses vis a vis a world on which he'd like to have some impact. The shotgun is the punch in the face the once-scrawny boy on the beach gives the bully when he returns a muscled linebacker.'"
Role Playing (Games)

Torchlight II Announced For 2011 85

Posted by Soulskill from the so-nice-they-made-it-twice dept.
Runic Games has announced a sequel to the popular action RPG Torchlight, planned for release in Spring 2011. One notable improvement from the first game is Torchlight II's inclusion of online co-op play, with LAN support and a matchmaking system. "The sequel will feature an updated version of the Torchlight editor, randomized overworld areas complete with weather effects, random dungeons, a selection of pets, fishing, limitless loot, and a retirement system which will allow users to retire an older character and bestow some benefits of it to a newly created character." An MMO set in the Torchlight world is still in development.

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