As yesterday suddenly exploded into a small family emergency, there was no reported GNoI. Today, as things have calmed down to say a perriwinkle, or stage mauve level of alert, we are resuming the posting of GNoI. Since there was much missed yesterday, today’s report will be a bit longer. So on we go, to today’s industry news in your regulraly scheduled GNoI:

Law of the Game discusses the current EA vs Take2 entanglement and what the real legal issues are and could be.

With apparently little or no warning, several key-members of the RetroStudios staff have left the Austin based dev house… there are currently no updates on whether or not this will lead to the formation of a new studio, however, there are some *rumors* that this is in direct response to the way in which Nintendo has gone about asking employees to relocate.
Gamecock Media is promoting Hail to the Chimp during a pres-primary in Philadelphia. Gamecock Media is awesome, they’re funny and silly and occasionally they publish games too!
Minusworld is releasing a very funny (and highly satirical) activity and coloring book for GTAIV. Please remember, that this is obviously meant to be ironic with regards to actually ‘hocking violence to the kiddies’…

The actual link:
There’s a new documentary film for gamers, this time taking a look at the world, as in, real-world, lives of MMO players. The film is called, Second Skin. Let the new digital and celluloid record bare witness to the underground world of cyber-sexing and poop-socking!
Former Take2 exec/CEO, Ryan Brant is back in power once more, this time with a new start-up game company, known as GreenScreen Interactive.
Since the Chicago Trans-Authority banned the recent bus adverts after severe pressure from Fox News and Jack-y-boy Thompson, it seems almost as if Take2 is raising the stakes with the newly witnessed full building adverts in LA and NY for GTAIV.
Also of note, Jack-y-boy’s recent comments and erm, thoughts, if the term can be used on the Florida based bus-stop poster adverts for GTAIV as well, which very specifically included absolutely zero questionable material in both the visual and copy portions of the promotional material.
According to Ubisoft’s CEO, they are looking positively to a possible big-name merger in the very near future, and in the interim are on a large scale hiring spree, boosted by very positive sales of their products in 2007 to current. Ubisoft could see as many as 900 additional and newly hired staff members.

The gama has a very nice if not, as they put it themselves, highly-debatable opine piece on the top 20 underutilized licenses. The gama scores extra points for using the Watchmen in the banner itself to help sell the seriousness of the point.

Full version of the article:
According to McKinsey&Co (consulting) any company who is not looking to experiment and test the waters in VW’s is shooting themselves in the foot (I’m paraphrasing as they actually said, ‘[they are] ignoring them at their peril’). The term, ‘Duh!’ easily comes to mind in a snarky-internal-monologue sort of voice.
1Up is running a good feature on how dev’s and PR utilize popular forums to get a grass-roots gage of player reception and anticipation. It seems simple, and obvious, but not everyone realizes how this works apparently, hence the article (please see the ‘duh’ comment from above for this one as well).
Will Ferrell, seems to be looking to expand his current ‘funnyordie’ website with an actual game-slant/content and possible game focus, possibly known as ‘gameordie’(!?).

Today’s moment of zen must be relegated to SFW, and thusly, despite certain recent stories of both humorous and serious interest running the interwebz, about con’s and conduct therein, specifically, personal space and sexual, we won’t be discussing them or linking them here, even though they are in no way leud or crude, and actually have storng cultural significance… instead, here is Yahtzee and his (as always) humorous thoughts on games. Your Smash Bros. Brawl Zero Punctuation Moment of Zen, begins with a man in a hat and ends with a song. Zen!

Because brains, sense of humor and intelligent wit are the Smexiest things of all

–Aleister

The Adicts - Na Na Na

Tags: GNoI

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 24th, 2008 at 11:49 am and is filed under GNoI, Post. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.