‘allo to all! Yes I know I haven’t really been around much lately, but I have the greatest excuse ever! No seriously, it really is, short of my own death, I think the birth of my own son would be the only acceptable reason for me to be so blatantly absent from the beloved Normalinauts. At any rate, I am returning, there are certainly webcomics in the future and of course, if at all possible I will be uploading some picks of the incredible monkey-toed life form what came from APrilhead’s belly on April 6th 2008…. he’s adorable, so wait for it - Salem Ezra Grey!

In the meantime, I’ve been asked (oddly enough) what it is I actually do for a living. Good question, erm, not entirely sure exactly what to say to that other than the fact that I work in the vid-game industry, specifically for a company known as NtreevUSA (which by the nationalistic abbreviation at the back-end I’m sure you can deduce that it is part of another company, that being Ntreev proper/[Korea]). What we do is publish online vid-games, specifically Trickster Online Revolution and Grand Chase. While I’m sure not everyone is an avid gamer, or particularly interested in PC/online titles themselves… someone did ask, so this is what I do. I’ve made the comic guides for both games live on the relevant websites thereof, and until the end of 2007 committed a full color, weekly webcomic known as MegaloLife for the TricksterOnlineRevolution website (it was cancelled - still not sure ‘why’ exactly… let your imaginations run wild as you will).

But all of that aside, one of the other things I do, is sort of ‘cool hunting’ to quote Gibson, which is looking for current trends as well as predicting plausible projections both short and long term for the vid-game industry itself. One of the ways that I do this is to watch the current stable of industry spurned news from across the internet. I do this every. single. day. without fail, and over all it does a nice job of at least keeping me up to date on the current stories of interest. And since I figure that there are likely some other vid-game enthusiasts out there in Normaliland I thought it might be fun to try posting some of my little findings here on NR proper. This is an experiment and may or may not be continued depending on interest. After all, if no one cares about this, I won’t be hurt, but I’m not going to keep throwing it in your face either. So here it is, my lovingly titled GameNewsOfInterest (or GNoI) for today, April 16th, 2008, unabridged, unedited and all for you:

Welcome to the wonderful world of GNoI, your daily source for the industry news you crave, without all of the pesky, time-consuming and likely damage-inflicting and possibly dangerous web browsing. That’s right, we take the damage for you, so you don’t have to. Think of GNoI as your own personal meat-shield in the dangerous abyss of the vid-game industry news and more… but don’t think that hard, it is afterall, time to read some news:

The EU has finally approved Vivendi to fully merge with Acitvision. The apocalypse is nigh to be sure, and EA really has to be feeling burned on the whol being snubbed by Take2 thing now.

The Sims (combined of course amongst all iterations) has passed the 100m mark in worldwide sales, which is really, and simply crazy, because it’s, well, the Sims… /sigh

Variety is getting in on the GTAIV fever, and has predicted a return of $400m in the first week for the title. Gee, um thanks, Variety, now how about that whole Firefly show that you essentially ignored and helped to kill….?

NC Soft has just introduced their own online currency, the NCcoin. A little astonished that it took them this long to come out with a real micro-transaction currency all of their ownsome.

Dev house and notable game creator of yesteryear, Petroglyph in partnership with TrueGamesInteractive will be creating and releasing f2p games with the usual micro-transaction model attached.

CCP is all over the recent leak of the source code for EVE, and is making sure to a, well, assure the players that even though the code is out and can be manipulated, it won’t present any unfair advantages for hackers in-game.

The unlikely and uncanny VW juggernaut, BuildABear is still at it, making even stronger ties and tie-ins between the created v-space and the real-world stores. Currently on offer is the ability to watch supermullet-Cyrus-spawned-Hannah-Montanna footage… this is why we don’t have teley in the Gilgrim household.

Animax has announced a new Branded Entertainment Div, to work in conjuncture with UInplugged TV and create Animax Unplugged. The hope is that this will allow a better focus both on internal IPs as well as expansion into multi-platform[media] outlets and tie-ins down the road. Like we need more Ty crap anywhere let alone online…

German created VW, Panfu, teaches the kiddies proper Spanish, and has received 1m+ reg’s in 4 months, for the browser-based, advertFREE, language immersion and socialization world…. why are Germans out to learn Spanish anyway?

With the announcement of the closing of Disney’s V-MagicKingdom, a very impressive 70% of the daily users (of which there are only 15k total to be fair) have signed an online petition basically begging the house that Mickey built to rethink its current plans. I’m most shocked at the numbers that show only a 15k daily usage O_O this is Disney after all, how sad…

Take2 is set to broadcast its annual shareholders meeting tomorrow, and speculation abounds regarding how much will be discussed regarding or in direct correlation to the recent and failed attempts of EA to try and hostily take over the major pub/dev. We’ll have to wait until tomorrow…

Browser based (truly?) and ‘freemium’ titled Quake Live is now accepting email addies for consideration in the Live Beta. If you fancy this sort of thing - go, go now!

Likely in conjunction with the upcoming NY ComicCon, Prototype from Sierra Entertainment is getting the proper comic-tie-in-treatment from none other than DC. Then again, it’s not coming in on the Vertigo imprint… so this could hold as much water as say, the MortalKombat comic-tie-ins of long ago… meh

Reportedly, 7 out of the 11 available servers for Pirates of the Burning Sea have been shut down. The reason: lack of user base… PotBS has chosen, in answer, to close down many of the low-pop servers to better promote pop-density. Really hope this works out for them… it’s very nice to see an online title that doesn’t have a clichéd fantasy setting, like oh say, all of the others…

Shepard Fairey (yes the guy who co-opted/aped John Carpenter’s TheyLive for his own ObeyGiant brand) has been tapped by 2K to create a series of promotional posters for the upcoming Civ-Rev release. Very smart, very edgy, very forward thinking in many regards…

Sega’s KingOfGames T-shirt line is now being made available internationally, officially for the first time ever. Neat!

And now to conlude today’s daily GNoI report, as we do every day in honor of the proud tradition of one John Stewart, here it is, your moment of zen. Today’s zen includes, Yahtzee, YHTBTR, Special-kiddie-firendly-Sonic-smokes and a little bit of Bailey.

Begin Zen integration now:

Yahtzee brings us his take on Condemmed 2: Bloodshot, hobo bashing, Indigo Prophecy Syndrome and other funness.

YouHaveToBurnTheRope a simple game with a great ending theme.

Sonic is all about promoting youth tobacco use… next up, Night Train?

–Aleister

My Chemical Romance - Thank You For The Venom

PS

Kilian has an original piece of artwork that I made for him on his birthday (when the drunken Cranium was played) and he’s supposedly looking for a scanner to use in order to share it with the digital world at large… If you want to see it, pester him, or give him a scanner. And if you’re giving away things, don’t forget me, I want things, I have a kid now afterall…

Since there was some positive response yesterday, and few to zero nay-sayers in sight, I’m going ahead and bringing back another edition of the GNoI (Game News of Interest). So here it is, unedited, on proofed, and free from all of the distracting web-browsing that you would need to unceremoniously submit your self to, in order to find this stuff on your own.

GNoI - the daily report of interesting game industry news that is, well, of interest! We wade through the seemingly endless muck of shock, shlock and gleaming stupidity of the industry news so YOU don’t have to! Here are today’s bite-sized, nuggets of interest, behold, news:

The Federal Trade Commission is taking a good long look into the bid (hostile in most regards) from EA for Take2.

Adam Sessler interviews the authors of Grand Theft Childhood, the new book which takes a careful look at the correlation between violent vid-games and real-world youth violence, with surprising results that are far from the norm that we’ve come to expect on the topic, especially from politicians looking to utilize games on their poli-platforms.

Games, in way to get kids into libraries again is what libraries are looking to do. Tomorrow, Friday, has been designated as ‘Gaming @ Your Library Day’ byt the American library Association, which is, quite obviously, meant to try and lure and sway today’s youth to the old standby of the brick and mortar public houses of books. We’ll see how it goes…

The FCC will be holding a hearing regarding Net neutrality at Stanford Uni today. It is expected that representatives from ECA, GamesForChange, and SaveTheInternet will be doing their best to show up, and voice their concerns regarding the corp-thieving and control of digital space. Let us all hope that this time, Comcast won’t pull another ringer stunt like they did last time to quell the voices of descent/reason/freedom.

According to analysts the EA proposed take-over of Take2, will require EA to pony up even more cash per share ($30USD+ per) which is at least a $4USD increase from the initial proposal. Whether or not EA will actually show the money is still yet to be seen, and with the revived interest of the FedTradeComish now being thrown into the mix as well, things do not bode well for EA’s attempts to grab the house behind GTA.

SCi has not been in the best financial condition of late (not Atari level bad, but still), yet it seems that they may be receiving a bit of a vitamin boost in the form of a possible and alleged stock deal with either NBC Universal or Time Warner. SCi is the parent Co of Eidos (think TombRaider). The new deal will either increase NBC’s current interest or create a new interest for TW, either way SCi needs the funds to secure their new salvaging strategy.

In apparent reaction to the recent price-cut of the M$ 360, Xbox is reporting a full doubling of sales in Europe, even hinting at more than doubling.

The gama is running a good thought/opine piece on the possible future of a one-console environ and what it would ‘really’ do to the industry as a whole outside of the general consumer perspective.

Ankama Studio (France) has partnered with Kalmeo to release DofusPocket for the mobile market. The title is a mobile version of the hugely (7m reg users) tactical-MMOrpg, Dofus. The port will have new content and additional features to help separate it from the online flash-based version and to make it more than a clone/port.

MindCandy has launched new VW called Moshi Monsters, which is reportedly targeted at ‘little kids and big kids alike.’ It is cute, there’s no denying, but will the tamagotchi style play design offer enough to keep the kiddies entertained and coming back for more, and enough to get monies from mommy and daddy? We’ll see…

Cheyenne Mountain (dev house behind Stargate Worlds) has just announced the creation of a new publishing house, known as FireSky. Some of the thinking behind FireSky’s strategy is fairly interesting a worth at least a sound-bite driven glance.

SquareEnix has announced a new mobile ‘mail’ MMO entitled Ellark. The release is scheduled for Japan with no work for other regions and it will incorporate the now popular micro-transaction model to support the otherwise free game.

Toyota, not content to merely have a VW presence in Gaia Online is now opening their own VW, known as Totya Metapolis. The link includes a vid tour of the project currently running on the Meet-Me technology for Japan.

Numedon (Whyville, SportsBlox) is looking to close their Series B funding drive with an estimate of nearly $2mUSD(+) in the final outcome.

BBC Worldwide has partnered with Star Farm Produictions to release a new children’s fantasy VW.

The Cartoon Network original VW, announced at last year’s SDCC, has now been pushed back to Fall 2008.

Gaia Online has announced a new MMOG that will be in some way ‘tied’ to the existing Gaia brand but not directly connected to the current gameplay. The game has been in dev since 2007 and SDCC will be where you need to be to get into the Beta version of the game.

GTAIV’s proposed DLC might actually feature an entire city, this would be the largest DLC currently available for any title and actually makes it closer to an outright expansion in more traditional PC gaming terms.

Tokyopop (where many mangaka seem to get their start, yours truly included) has set a 3 yr publishing cycle to release 22 new mangas tied directly into the WoW and Starcraft seri/universes. To be accurate the mangas are actually more manwha with possible writers from the west added in - the announcement has been made in correlation with the currently running NYCC.

Allegedly, a Take2 stock-holder is filing a class-action lawsuit against Take2 for its refusal of EA’s buy-out offers, reporting that the refusal is fiscally irresponsible on the level of being criminal.

And finally to close out today’s GNoI in the proud and continued tradition that you’ve come to expect, here it is, your moment of zen, featuring Uwe Boll, Voltron, VGcats, and aDutyToDo (say it fast please). Zen is beginning now:

Uwe Boll is actually (and I’m really NOT kidding here) stating that Spielberg and Michael Bay, have been using false idents to sign the current petition to get the crazy German to quit butchering cinema and game-movies in general. For those not in the know, Uwe, supposedly stated (probably in a publicity stunt to coincide with the upcoming trash, Postal) that he would quite making movies if 1,000,000 individuals would step up and tell him to ‘STOP.’ So far, the effort has garnered at least 200k responses, and in light of the strength of the internet driven poll/petition, Uwe is already backpedaling and claiming that the ’sigs’ are merely the work of a ‘few individuals’ signing over and over under aliases. He didn’t say ‘alias’ actually, probably, because he can’t spell it…

Official petition for all interested parties and lovers of both cinema and games that wish the horror to finally come to an end.

Free Voltron episode is now available on Xbox vid… erm kaaaaaaaaaay…

Glory be unto Scott and his VGcats, which despite the very efforts of god himself, has survived a recent tornado and is back to doing what he does best… making game-themed webcomics fun again.

GNoI has it’s own ‘duty to do’

–Aleister

Gnarls Barkley - Surprise

PS

Work on tomorrow’s comic is still commencing, right now, I’m just busy coloring the thing and with any luck (and hopefully, without any currently unforeseen complications, professional, medical or otherwise) it will be here, where it belongs on NR!

Number 1.
I have often, perhaps more then is particularly healthy, gone into detail about my admiration…and more…for Tim Powers. Today, during a discussion among members of the Tim Powers Yahoo Group (why not join, everyone needs more reasons to waste time on the interwebz, right?), Powers recounted a story that I’ve heard him tell before…

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