eGames decides to “socialize” its casual games and roll out some new games on brazillian social network, Orkut. Article and analysis by Benzinga

“Our games will be developed for the social networks using OpenSocial(R), which is a set of common application programming interfaces (APIs) for web-based social network applications, developed by Google along with MySpace(R) and other social networks. OpenSocial applications can be easily deployed to many social networks including hi5(R), Yahoo! (R), MySpace, Ning(R), Friendster(R), Plaxo(R), and eventually Facebook(R).”

With Perfect World getting a new race with two classes, Jade Dynasty / ZXOnline aren’t far behind as they’ve got their new race: The Athan.

The Balo

Within this demigod race, there are two Factions, the first of which is the Balo. These hardened warriors come at a time when many in the mortal realm are looking to seize power and the secret to immortality. To combat this problem, the Immortals have created the Balo: indispensable frontline fighters that were formed to represent pure brute strength and were inspired by the invulnerability of molten rock.

Yes folks, they are deemed to be the ultimate tank. Big weapons and armors for big people.

The Athan

Regarding the other Athan faction, the Arden, they look like a near carbon copy of Perfect World’s Venomancers / Yao Jing with bows as the primary weapon. Oh, and by the way, they have the capability to summon monsters/pets. More on the vid below:

Will wait for these races to shake up e-Games‘ ZXOnline here in the Philippines soon.

Source

Look, I think that you’re implying that my iPhone was inadequate for the job. But I maintain that it takes a better quality image (on the fly as we were) than my five year old camera plus it’s a little bit less conspicuous. It’s as inconspicuous as taking photos of strangers can get.

The above images sort of represent the scale and the scope of the exhibition. It sorta looks like a crowd of strange people walking around a Ye Olde Gymnasium navigating their way around arbitrary walls, if you ask me. It doesn’t get any more impressive, folks.

Here we get to play the latest hyped up no doubt best seller, Borderlands, on the 360. The game was hidden behind a giant black curtained cubicle, as if to say “stand back, ye children, for these walls hold that which will corrupt and destroy your feeble minds with pictures of great gore and intensity.” The game itself, while we didn’t stick around too long, seemed to be quality. The graphical style I quite liked, and it did what it advertised: give us a nice post-apocalyptic FPS with a smattering of RPG and a lot of quirky weapons. Would probably get stale unless you were into multiplayer, though.

Assassin’s Creed 2. Wasn’t enticing looking enough for any of us to play. Based off the concept, it should be entertaining enough, and hopefully less flawed than the first one is famous for.

I don’t even remember what this was. A little help?

I got a t-shirt instead of a hat, so I think I win out there. And don’t forget all the free advertising pamphlets we got! Alright, so that wasn’t quite everything at the con. We didn’t stay the whole time (it was open until 7PM), and some stalls seemed to have not even been set-up by the time we decided to leave. They might have been planning something on the big stage & projector too, but we didn’t see anything worth giving a crap about in the time we were there. Basically, there are only so many times you can walk around and purvey the same things before you get restless and impatient. eGames wasn’t horrible, but it’s probably one of our weaker yearly cons (at least, this year’s – nothing from Sony or Nintendo, what the hell) and considering how isolated and ignored Australia is, as well as how many cons I’ve actually been to in the first place, that says a lot. But hey, silly hat.

As mentioned last time, eGames was able to get Runes of Magic (RoM), an MMO that’s been making waves in the International MMO scene. I was lucky enough to get an invite and a DVD Instaler from RoM Ph’s Community Manager, Ms. Bea. Written below are just a couple of my experiences while playing the game.

First off, downloading the client installer was an exercise in futility. I usually ended up with corrupted downloads for some strange reason, the torrent file had no seeder and was impossible to download from there. Good thing that CM Bea was able to send me a copy of the installer on the last day of the Alpha Testing Session 2.

As I entered the game, I felt the lag hit me immediately. The response of the buttons was sluggish and loading time was a bit slow. Nevertheless, I consider this as a massive improvement over what I experienced in RoM Intl.

And there it was, my pre-generated character at Level 30

Uber powered with upped weapons and armor really made the questing extremely easy…too easy. With such a high level doing beginner quests, I decided to create a level 1 character to really experience the whole beginner’s game to check for bugs.

So far, there I didn’t notice any bugs while I was at the Pioneer’s Village nor at Logar. Too bad I was unable to continue to the next town as the Alpha Test Session 2 ended today. I’ll be waiting for Alpha Test Session 3 and help out with the bug collection.

RoM is a great game, and if you’re in the Philippines, you should try it out! You can go to the RoM Ph Blog for the invite codes and client downloads.

Good luck!

Que no le digan, que no le cuenten, la premisa se cumplió con eso de los 20 votos.

Algunos fueron más insistentes que otros, en una de esas el Alex ya tiene férreos admiradores y eso supongo le va a encantar así que no olviden quedar bien con él diciendo que se ve bien rockstar… jejeje

La democracia prevalece en este rincón de la web!

Quiero que brindemos por eeeeeeellaaaaaas!

¿Cómo dice?

Si tu quieres seremos amigooooooos...

What’s more worst than waiting for a new game to launch it’s CBT phase?

It’s finding out you would only be disappointed with it.

More after the jump!

I expected something more from the makers of Perfect World online, yes, if you still don’t know it yet, Levelup Games Perfect World and E-games’ ZxOnline or Zhuxian Online was created by the same company Beijing Perfect World Co., Ltd.

First Problem – Patching.

I still don’t know if there’s a patch but they released a manual patch that seems to fix (sort of) the patcher problem. The thing is I installed it and nothing seem to have been fixed it still is saying “failed to connect to update server, try other update server” and showing a non-existent webpage in the what’s supposedly a notice area.

Lacking of a good translation.

I understand that this is one of the first english translated version of the game (the other under Cubinet.com) but the lack of translation is utterly devastating. I mean how many players in the Philippines do they think can read chinese letters? Those fortunate enough may ignore this but for the majority and I mean “the majority” this means a lot.

Can anyone translate that for me?

You’ll also see a lot of that in-game. System announcements are also sent out to players in Chinese.

Lack of Customization.

Perfect World is unique with their character customization system, in a sense that you can really make some  unique looking avatars that may look like anyone from George Bush, Obama, or a player favorite Maria Ozawa. But Unfortunately for zxonline they don’t have this feature. Instead you get the usual “pool” of available looks

So plain

What’s worst is that you don’t keep the face and hairstyle you have chosen after the first series of quest as the equippable “helmet” or “hair accessories” changes your hairstyle to a set look

OMGWTFBBQ It’s like… magic magic magic!

Not that I’m complaining with that look, but I’m complaining for how I think that hundreds will look exactly like me… ack…

And You know what irk me the most?

I can’t even spell Reiciello as my avatar name!!! Whaaaaaaa!! The first ever in an MMORPG or in any forms that I need to have my Reiciello name can’t be completed, it would go as far as Reiciel…. That’s a girls name for pete’s sake!

It’s just the beginning, CBT, who knows? Maybe they’ll find my blog and some other that had this trouble or inconvenience… I never played the original version nor am I planning to so I can’t really give out an unbias comparison. Let’s just hope that they’ll be able to fix these issues.

]]> http://subjectnavigator.wordpress.com/2008/11/13/blog-pause/ Thu, 13 Nov 2008 11:53:58 +0000 Daniel Golding http://subjectnavigator.wordpress.com/2008/11/13/blog-pause/

Just a quick note: I’ll be out and about for the next three days covering eGames, so blogging will be put on hold temporarily. I hope to resume with new energy and ideas come Monday.

I think that by this point, it’s probably safe to say that Yahtzee, and his Zero Punctuation series is not only the most viewed videogame commentary on the internet, but also probably one of the most highly viewed video series going around. By all reports, he gets about 5 million hits per video, which by anyone’s estimation is a fair few. As Not Quite Art pointed out, that’s more than the last few AFL or NRL grand final TV viewerships every week.

I am a huge fan of Yahztee. I think he is funnier than I could ever hope to be, and in large swathes more insightful. His biggest contribution to gaming has been to point out the basic things that games get wrong time and time again and to say, “that’s actually not good enough – why have we been ignoring this?”. Essentially, he’s just been a terrific antidote to the many overhyped reviewers we’ve been reading over the last decade.

But I do have problems with his approach, which I really think need to be voiced. I actually suspect that his popularity is somewhat on the decline now, or, at least has started to level out. Nonetheless, his huge influence means that it’s important to make criticisms now, rather than ignoring them as we have the flaws in games he so often points out.

I was at a live talk given by Yahtzee at ACMI earlier this year. It was an illuminating session in more ways than one. The most interesting point which I hope to challenge is that during this talk, Yahtzee made it clear that first, what he is doing is criticism, and second, he’s pretty much the only one doing it.

Obviously the second point is completely erroneous, but it does make you wonder whether he has actually tried to find genuine criticism lately. There are hundreds of blogs out there that do just as much insightful work as he does, not to mention a growing amount of academic work on videogames. Mr Crowshaw, if you ever stumble across this blog, I’d be more than happy to give you hundreds of links to people who I think are doing criticism. I think Yahztee is right in that there still isn’t much mainstream criticism going on: not at the IGNs, not at the GameSpots. But that doesn’t mean that he’s somehow the only one doing videogame criticism on the internet.

The first point, however, is one that I feel strongest about. I agree that Yahtzee is doing criticism, however, I’m not sure if it is, in many respects good criticism. In fact, about the only way I believe you could really find solace in Yahtzee’s criticism is if you mistook ‘criticism’ for ‘critical’. People now expect certain things when they watch his videos, or even hear him talk in person. The first thing that they expect is that he’ll be funny. The second thing they expect is that he’ll be funny while beating the living daylights out of some innocent game. It works: even if you love a videogame he reviews, you’ll still laugh at the jokes. But does this make for good criticism? I don’t think so. It means that – and I suspect that he’s almost now trapped in a situation of his own making here – he simply can’t praise a game for very long without his audience getting bored.

It’s easier to be funny and appear insightful if all you are doing is being negative. It’s not so easy to be entertaining and insightful while praising a game.

The biggest problem I have here is that really, in this sense, Yahtzee just becomes the loudest and most sophisticated troll in the gaming community. Our online community is nothing if not combative; flame wars occur on gaming forums at the drop of a hat. It’s therefore unsurprising that our most lauded critic is loudly negative and combative (not to mention that whole ludology v. narratology thing that went on, like our own great academic deathmatch). People watch his videos to hear him ridicule and criticise; they do not watch them, I believe, for insightful criticism.

The internet loves Yahtzee. I love Yahtzee. But the internet does not need more people like Yahztee. The gaming community needs more commentators who can criticise a game to breaking point, but who also find nothing more pleasurable than recommending a great game out of obscurity to people who listen. We need more NGai Croals, more Brainy Gamers. Skepticism and praise in equal doses.

As a closing point, I actually hope to raise some of these points with Yahtzee at the upcoming eGames expo in Melbourne. I’ll report back if I manage to wrangle a response.

VISIT SITE HERE

Hello world. It’s about time that I made a new post. Yesterday and the day before have been a crap load of fun but really tiring at the same time. On Monday I went out with some friends and just chillaxed for a bit at Burger King before heading somewhere to play pool.

Since pool gets boring after a while, we just decided to end it after two games and went and played Foosball instead. I hope you kids know what Foosball is…it also goes by the name of tabletop football and looks like a mini football pitch with stick controllable “players”. It was a tough two-on-two match with my friend Jerome and I on one team and my friends Arvinder and Maurice on the other team. It was like a real football match with swearing and the occasional “DON’T SATAY!!” being yelled out by Jerome. I myself never knew what he meant until he explained that “Satay” was the act of twisting the err…stick really fast causing the ball to fly across the table.

At one point our coin got stuck in the machine which meant we couldn’t start a new game. After a bit of banging around we managed to get it unstuck and continued our match(Jerome and I won 4/5 games) until we encountered a new problem. The problem was the ball was stuck in the middle of the table and it was too far for any of our “players” to reach. So being the hooligans that we are(and applying our extensive knowledge of pinball techniques), we tilted the table to one side and managed to continue our game. I guess it’s another form of football hooliganism(albeit on a smaller scale) where the outcome of a game is influenced by the crowd. Instead, I think I’ll call it Foosball hooliganism. Here’s a visual which could help you understand it better…

So that was pretty fun as you can see…

The rest of the day was all a blur of computer games, muay thai training, cigarettes, girls and alcohol as I went from meeting one group of friends, training, to meeting another group of friends at 11-ish. I didn’t get much sleep and ended up back home, tired as hell, at around 5 or 6am. The same morning I got back, I had only an hour or two of sleep before meeting Atika to hangout. The rest of the day was a blur of walking from one end of Orchard Road to the other and playing games(for some reason I’ve been playing games a lot this week).

We played Halo 3 on the xbox at eGames in Orchard Cineleisure for about an hour then walked all the way to Cyberdome to play an hour of Counter Strike (CS) before walking back to Takashimaya and then finally heading home. When I got home I was pretty damn tired so I wasn’t up for making dinner. Instead I conveniently walked over to McDonald and got myself a Big Mac with big fries and a big drink. Overall it felt like a 48 hour day with a siesta(nap) in between and I slept like a baby last night. I think this post is getting a bit long, so I’ll end it here.

Cheers,

Marco

La feria eGames se inaugura este viernes en Australia y espera obtener una cifra cercana a los 20.000 visitantes. Es el evento dedicado a los videojuegos más importante del país, que en su estreno el año pasado recibió 15.000 visitantes, una cifra realmente notable.

Este año se celebrará la feria eGames en el Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre y contará con la presencia de 50 compañías, que mostrarán novedades como Crysis, Assassin’s Creed, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, Gran Turismo 5 Prologue y SingStar. El evento también contará con especialistas y expertos en educación que ofrecerán consejos a aquellos que deseen iniciarse en el desarrollo de videojuegos, junto con conferencias de Nintendo Australia, 2K Australia y Sony, entre otros.