Online Gaming News

What if Xbox LIVE Cost $100? (PC World) October 19 @ 7 PM source

PC World - VIP access to Microsoft's panoply of online services for the Xbox 360 costs $50 a year.

D&D Handbook Distribution Lawsuit Settled For $125,000 October 18 @ 7 PM source

The Installer writes "Wizards of the Coast is in the process of settling its claim against several individuals for illegal distribution of its newest copyrighted handbook. 'In one of three lawsuits brought by Wizards of the Coast LLC, a subsidiary of Hasbro Inc., US District Judge Thomas S. Zilly on Friday accepted a settlement in which Thomas Patrick Nolan of Milton, Fla., agreed to a judgment against him of $125,000.' These were the lawsuits that went along with WotC's decision to stop selling the handbook in .PDF format. 'According to court filings, more than 2,600 copies of the handbook were downloaded from Scribd.com, and more than 4,200 copies were viewed online before the material was pulled from the document-sharing site at Wizards' request.'"

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New Super Mario Bros. Wii Attempts To Bridge Casual/Hardcore Divide October 17 @ 9 AM source

When Nintendo returns to its roots next month by releasing a new, 2-D, side-scrolling Super Mario Bros. game for the Wii, it's trying to do more than simply hop on the retro bandwagon many publishers have ridden in recent months. Speaking at a roundtable discussion in New York this week, Nintendo game designer Shigeru Miyamoto talked about how they're trying to satisfy fans of the series who want challenging gameplay in addition to attracting new or casual players just looking for an entertaining platformer. Quoting: "... you can play the story mode single-player all the way through from beginning to end, and at any point along the way, you can add players from the world map and have up to four players cooperate to complete the levels. And beyond that, there are two dedicated multiplayer modes, one of which is free-for-all, which lets you select the stages from story mode ... so you can easily find the stage you like. And then there’s also a coin battle mode which is a competitive multiplayer mode, in which you’re actually competing for points and you’re getting ranked based on how many points you’ve collected. The free-for-all mode has kind of a similar feel to something like Mario Kart where you just happen to have four people over and you want to sit down and play a quick match in your favorite level."

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Free-To-Play Switch Going Well For D&D Online October 15 @ 11 AM source

babboo65 writes "Dungeons and Dragons Online is enjoying a second life in terms of player count and buzz, all thanks to its new business strategy: giving the game away. Turbine is making their MMO as accessible as possible, and that includes making players who don't pay anything as happy as possible. Subscriptions are up 40 percent. Ars explores how free can be very profitable."

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Modern Games and Technology Challenging ESRB's Effectiveness October 14 @ 11 AM source

The Entertainment Software Rating Board has been around for 15 years now, overcoming an ineffective start and a host of controversial events to become a fairly well-respected ratings agency. However, as this article at The Escapist points out, the world of video games is changing, and the ESRB does not seem to be adapting along with it. "The most pressing problem is the ESRB's reluctance to address online interactions. Seeing as we're moving more and more toward online and internet-enabled games, this inevitably limits the ESRB's authority as a ratings board. Although the ESRB rates the submitted developer content within online games, these ratings are always qualified by an important disclaimer: 'Online Interactions Not Rated by the ESRB.' To date, this has meant that the rating given to the designed game content doesn't cover chat and other forms of player-to-player communication. That's unfortunate, because the ESRB's intimate relationship with the game industry could provide it with a unique vantage point from which to evaluate aspects of online games that are beyond the purview of other would-be raters, including the quality of the game's moderation system, programmed restrictions on chat and known player demographics."

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BioWare's Dragon Age Origins Character Creator Released (PC World) October 14 @ 12 AM source

PC World - "Servers are melting," blogs BioWare, but if you want to fiddle with Dragon Age Origin's character creator, you can try your luck downloading it now. The actual creator, that is, as seen in the game itself when it ships for PC and Xbox 360 on November 3rd (PS3 owners have to wait until November 17th for some reason).

China to Clean up Online Games Amid Addiction Woes (PC World) October 12 @ 2 PM source

PC World - Chinese authorities have promised to clean the country's online gaming industry of "unhealthy" content such as violence and pornography, asserting more control over use of the Internet in the country.

China bans foreign investment in online games industry (Reuters) October 12 @ 1 PM source

Reuters - China has banned foreign investment into its lucrative online games industry in an effort to tighten control over its virtual worlds.

The Problem of Shards, Servers, and Queues In MMOs October 11 @ 8 PM source

An editorial at GamesIndustry takes a look at a couple of problems many MMOs have failed to solve as the genre has evolved over the last decade: log-in queues and a split player base. The most recent example is Aion, which launched in Europe and North America a few weeks ago. Players on some of the game's servers had to deal with lengthy queues until enough people left the starting areas and spread throughout the game. To NCSoft's credit, the queues are mostly gone already, and it wasn't simply launching with too few servers that was the problem (nor was simply launching more servers a perfect solution, as Warhammer proved). In fact, several servers had no queues at all, but many players had set their sights on the more popular ones — a problem facing other MMOs as well. At this point, it becomes a matter of programming — how can the developers for these MMOs build the networking aspect of the game such that more hardware can easily be allocated when it's needed, and also make it easier for people to play together without the restriction of different shards or servers? EVE Online has done well with a single game universe, but it's not clear how far that model can scale upwards.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

China launches crackdown on online gaming (AFP) October 9 @ 11 AM source

AFP - China has launched a campaign to crack down on online games operating illegally and featuring content deemed to be unhealthy, state media reported Friday, in the nation's latest Internet clean-up effort.