I T ( ) E - U N I T E D

Scum and Villainy

2012-01-24T18:48:00.002-05:00

From Kotaku: Hackers Brag That They’re Banning Innocent Battlefield 3 Users

The people at the game-hacking site Artificial Aiming can't stand the anti-cheat service Punkbuster. One of their members is going on the offensive today—aggressively.

One junior member says he and his anonymous hacking team are banning innocent Battlefield 3 users—"framing" them, as they put it—to show their disdain for Punkbuster, a service that PC players of the popular first-person shooter are compelled to install when they start the game.

The hackers have narrowed their target to Battlefield 3 users who are playing on servers that are tied into the cheat-detecting service GGC-Stream.

"We are bringing back the unerring of punkbuster back for a 3rd season," Artificial Aiming user anonpbspoofer boasted in a forum post yesterday.

"We have selected ggc-stream as the target since they have the most streaming bf3 servers and makes it very easy to add fake bans. In 2011 we hit them with a mass ban wave and now were are banning real players from battlelog while ggc-stream is totally unaware. We have framed 150+ bf3 players alone."

I hate people.

Posted by Stinky in TS

2012-01-13T20:36:00.002-05:00

I'm a bit worried about Stinky after what he put in Teamspeak chat tonight:

<19:43:32>
"Stinky Sack": I'm f*ing POSSIBLE hard on, I'm horny giant Viagron, Coz my precious adviser Is a boner pill by Pfizer!

Skyrim in Real Life

2012-01-13T18:37:00.001-05:00

The Adventures of Joe the Mammoth - Chapter 1

2012-01-03T17:56:00.001-05:00

Joe the Mammoth is the true Dragonborn. No one saw that coming.

Here begin the chronicles of his journey through Skyrim...

Part 1: Joe arrives in Skyrim

Part 2: Joe goes to college

Part 3: Joe learns alchemy

Part 4: Joe has a drink

Part 5: Joe tackles his first Nordic puzzle

Part 6: Joe helps Aventus Aretino perform the Black Sacrament

Part 7: Joe gets arrested (no photographs, please)

Part 8: Joe becomes Thane of Markarth

Part 9: Joe become Guild Master of the Thieves Guild

Part 10: Joe contemplates the Way of the Voice at High Hrothgar

d00d playz too much shooterz

2012-01-02T08:09:00.000-05:00

Favorite comment in the youtube page: "I used to be an epic gamer like him until I took an arrow to the knee."

Battlefield 4 beta gameplay

2011-12-23T15:00:00.000-05:00

Heh, I love Freddie. He's my HERO. (Get it?)

The sickness

2011-12-21T19:41:00.001-05:00

SOURCE: http://pettyartist.deviantart.com/art/Constant-Companion-Portal-162763625

Another Skyrim Video

2011-12-15T23:03:00.004-05:00

Okay, so yeah I know it's getting out of hand, but here.

And yeah, we know it's not real, because he kills three bears without even having to try. They should have shown him getting his ass kicked.

Completely off topic

2011-12-14T08:58:00.000-05:00

But in the theme of silly videos:

Hey Mage: I'll see your censorship...

2011-12-13T12:36:00.001-05:00

...and raise you this guy:

Unnecessary Censorship

2011-12-13T10:08:00.001-05:00

The Dragonborn Comes

2011-12-12T21:15:00.001-05:00

Wow.

Best BF3 video we may ever see

2011-12-11T10:25:00.001-05:00

BF3 notice

2011-12-06T16:05:00.001-05:00

You must be logged-in to Origin to download the patch.

Skyrim has one big problem...

2011-12-04T15:16:00.001-05:00

...but no one cares, really. There's more than enough to love, that the tiresome bits may be tolerated.

Tom Bissell, a man whose writing was unknown to me before today, wrote a series of interesting words on Grantland, a site I have never heard of before. His subject is Skyrim's narrative exposition, and why it sucks, needlessly. Read the whole thing, of course, (and fear no spoilers) but this will whet your appetite:

I suppose that can't really be held against the Elder Scrolls games any more than the addictiveness of crystal meth can be held against crystal meth dealers. The real problem with the Elder Scrolls games — the real artistic problem, I mean — is that when you're not out there chopping and shopping, or dropping a Helmet of Alteration to make room for an Axe of Freezing, you're stuck in some town, being buttonholed by a loquacious elf inexplicably determined to tell you all about a magic tree. The series' designers have always mercifully allowed the player the option of spamming through the tedious pre-quest dialogue at the speed of thumb, but the problem with the Elder Scrolls games has now grown more significant than its narrative content's optionality. The problem, it now seems clear, is that the way in which the Elder Scrolls games present their narrative content — the way, in other words, they try to communicate "drama" — has never worked and will never work.

The dialogue in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is without question the best written and most capably performed of any Elder Scrolls game. Another way of saying this: It remains terrible. Please know that, two hours into Skyrim, my astoundometer remained soaringly high. Whether you're watching some lonely club-carrying giants herd woolly mammoths across the steppe or journeying up a snowy mountain to a hidden monastery or hiding in a watchtower from a poison-breathing dragon or doing something as desultory as catching butterflies, for god's sake, the game is as visually compelling as it is experientially gratifying. Every time one of Skyrim's characters opened his or her mouth, however, I felt my irritation begin to nibble away at Skyrim's edges. Irritation in response to a game's dialogue is especially problematical when said game contains hours upon hours of dialogue. How can it be that the part of the game that exerts so much effort to accomplish something succeeds in accomplishing nothing?

Mother of God...

2011-11-12T20:03:00.001-05:00

Change your Steam passwords

2011-11-10T19:41:00.000-05:00

November 10th, 2011

Dear Steam Users and Steam Forum Users:
Our Steam forums were defaced on the evening of Sunday, November 6. We began investigating and found that the intrusion goes beyond the Steam forums.
We learned that intruders obtained access to a Steam database in addition to the forums. This database contained information including user names, hashed and salted passwords, game purchases, email addresses, billing addresses and encrypted credit card information. We do not have evidence that encrypted credit card numbers or personally identifying information were taken by the intruders, or that the protection on credit card numbers or passwords was cracked. We are still investigating.
We don’t have evidence of credit card misuse at this time. Nonetheless you should watch your credit card activity and statements closely.
While we only know of a few forum accounts that have been compromised, all forum users will be required to change their passwords the next time they login. If you have used your Steam forum password on other accounts you should change those passwords as well.
We do not know of any compromised Steam accounts, so we are not planning to force a change of Steam account passwords (which are separate from forum passwords). However, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to change that as well, especially if it is the same as your Steam forum account password.
We will reopen the forums as soon as we can.
I am truly sorry this happened, and I apologize for the inconvenience.
Gabe.

We Love CounterStrike

2011-11-07T11:14:00.001-05:00

Harshest game review ... ever

2011-10-19T21:15:00.001-04:00

Extra Credits excoriates Call of Juarez, the Cartel.

+1

Saints Row: The Third - "Shock and Awesome" trailer

2011-10-18T12:28:00.003-04:00

Why is it that any game that mocks CoD and BF immediately gets my attention? It's just a trailer, for Pete's sake.

But still, it's a pretty awesome trailer:

CCP responds ... well

2011-10-06T12:22:00.000-04:00

Very well, indeed. I have no prognostications to offer, but the message is pitch-perfect:

A LETTER TO THE FOLLOWERS OF EVE

reported by CCP Hellmar | 2011.10.05 17:29:00 | NEW | Comments

Dear Followers of EVE Online,

The past few months have been very humbling for me. I've done much soul searching, and what follows is my sincere effort to clear the air with all of you. Please bear with me as I find my way through.

The estrangement from CCP that many of you have been feeling of late is my fault, and for that I am truly sorry. There are many contributing factors, but in the end it is I who must shoulder the responsibility for much of what has happened. In short, my zeal for pushing EVE to her true potential made me lose sight of doing the simple things right. I was impatient when I should have been cautious, defiant when I should have been conciliatory and arrogant when I should have been humble.

This soul searching took me back to when EVE was just an idea. Bringing her to life in 2003 was, in many people's minds, impossible. But we found a way because EVE is something unique in the world. Getting her to 100,000 subscribers was an even more fantastical feat. Before long, we were launching in China, making DUST 514, merging with White Wolf to build World of Darkness, building Carbon, growing the company to 600 people, increasing our subscriber count beyond that of the population of Iceland and on and on, one resounding success after the next despite earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and even a world economic collapse.

Somewhere along the way, I began taking success for granted. As hubris set in, I became less inclined to listen to pleas for caution. Red flags raised by very smart people both at CCP and in the community went unheeded because of my stubborn refusal to allow adversity to gain purchase on our plans. Mistakes, even when they were acknowledged, often went unanalyzed, leaving the door open for them to be repeated.

You have spoken, loudly and clearly, with your words and with your actions. And there were definitely moments in recent history when I wish I would have listened more and taken a different path.

I was wrong and I admit it.

Captain's Quarters

Without establishments and meaningful activities to engage in, forcing players into a mandatory single-player Captain’s Quarters experience was a mistake. I mentioned earlier the perils of not getting the simple things right. Removing ship spinning was a negligent oversight and a clear sign that we had fallen out of touch with our community. The interiors for Incarna were so scoped down by our launch window that CQ was essentially a prototype feature that we foolishly promoted as a full-blown expansion. We underestimated our development time, set impractical or misleading expectations, and added insult to injury by removing something in which players were emotionally invested.

I fully empathize with your disappointment in CCP. We would have been much better off positioning Incarna as an optional technology preview that interested players could have experienced and helped us to refine. The tragedy here is that the team really did build solid technology and great art to support what you can see and did it in way that sets a strong foundation for building out the rest. The fact is, in spite of our missteps, they delivered some of the most amazing interior rendering and character technology in the industry, and their efforts deserve praise. The fact we didn't leverage their achievement more effectively is my fault.

Virtual Goods

Next we arrive at our rather underwhelming virtual goods rollout. There was hardly anything to purchase initially, let alone to put the cost of the infamous monocle in perspective. The last thing we wanted to do was create the perception that all items in the store would be in that price range. Quite frankly, it was rather pointless to begin with because we did not have a multiuser environment in which players could show off their purchases. It was another feature that we rushed out the door before it was ready.

We also didn't do enough to assure you that this wasn’t the beginning of a "pay to win" scenario in EVE. Let me be blunt: Unless the MMO business changes radically, our virtual goods strategy for EVE Online will remain limited in scope and focus on vanity items, or as we said after the CSM visit this summer: The investment of money in EVE should not give you an unfair advantage over the investment of time.

Though the introduction was clearly flawed, our plans for virtual goods are intended to make your playing experience better, not to disrupt it. From a strategic perspective, we had to take these first steps because monthly subscriptions are increasingly becoming a thing of the past. The culture of online gaming is changing, just as the notion of digital ownership did with music. If we don't evolve our technology, our game design and our revenue model, then we risk obsolescence, and we just can't allow that to happen to EVE or to our community.

Incarna

For the same reasons, Incarna—the real one with actual meaningful gameplay in it— will be a big step towards the future. For an experience that relies so much on emergence and human interaction, it's remarkable that it's taken us this long to actually put a face on it. Once Incarna hits its stride, EVE will be more personal, and thus more accessible to general audiences. Visual self-expression in a virtual setting is a core psychological component of gaming; most people need to see their avatars, or something vaguely humanoid, or else they don’t connect with the game. We were behind the curve and it needs to be addressed for the sake of EVE's longevity. We have the technology. Now we need time to add the content that will bring more meaning to the gameplay—again, without disrupting the space combat simulator that many of you are, or at least were, very much in love with—and without delaying crucial improvements that this core experience desperately needs.

A Humbler, Stronger CCP

I'm sharing these revelations with you now because it's taken this long to transform them into action. From all this self-reflection, a genesis of renewal has taken root, a personal and professional commitment to restore the partnership of trust upon which our success depends, and a plan that sets the foundation for us to sensibly guide EVE to her fullest potential. In the coming days and weeks, the details of this plan and what it means for you will be unveiled. Part of what led us down this path is the fact we have not communicated well. This blog, and those that will follow, will hopefully demonstrate our conviction to transparency.

Good things are coming. They always do when you learn from your mistakes. In 2007, we faced a similar crisis of confidence, and it resulted in the creation of the CSM. We're a better company because of it. In the last months, we've taken a hard look at everything, including my leadership. What I can say for now is that we've taken action to ensure these mistakes are never repeated. We have reexamined our processes, hired experienced industry professionals for key leadership positions, reassessed our priorities, moved personnel around and, above all else, recognized our limitations.

For me, the most frustrating aspect of this is that after all this time, as far as EVE has come and in spite of everything that's happened, I fervently believe with all my heart that we've not even scratched the surface of EVE's potential. My personal failing is not reconciling that passion with pragmatism. We've been trying to expand the EVE universe in several directions at once, and I need to do a better job of pursuing that vision without diluting or marginalizing the things that are great—or could be great—about the game right now. Nullsec space needs to be fixed. Factional warfare needs to be fixed. The game needs new ships. We need to do a better job of nurturing our new players and making EVE the intriguing, boundless universe it has the potential to be.

We really do have something that no one else has. EVE is still unique in the real and virtual world. This is our vision for her, and we want so badly to take you there. But getting there is not an entitlement. It will take hard work, open communication and, above all else, collaboration with you. The greatest lesson for me is the realization that EVE belongs to you, and we at CCP are just the hosts of your experience. When we channel our passion for EVE constructively, we can make this vision a reality together.

But enough talk from me. We all know that much quoted phrase, "It's not what you say, it's what you do," that will make the difference here. From now on, CCP will focus on doing what we say and saying what we do. That is the path to restoring trust and moving forward.

Regards,

Hilmar Veigar Pétursson, CEO

CCP Hellmar

P.S.Please comment on our forums or on Twitter @HilmarVeigar

Aliens: Colonial Marines E3 presentation

2011-10-01T11:30:00.002-04:00

Looks pretty tense.

Woody Allen on "the Darkness"

2011-09-26T17:56:00.000-04:00

Call of Complacency

2011-09-26T17:47:00.005-04:00

The man's name is Edwin Evans-Thirlwell, and he wrote this article, entitled: "How to make Call of Duty worth your respect." This sentence sums it up nicely:

"If you [Bobby Kotick] aren't prepared to take a few creative risks, with all your millions on billions, who the hell will?"

I certainly agree with him, but I'm looking forward to what I expect to be the title of a follow-up post: "Why CoD Elite is such a clusterf*ck."

Creative complacency is its own punishment, but there are worse things on the horizon.

To know them is to love them

2011-09-23T17:08:00.000-04:00

DOTA isn't my cup of tea, but Valve's blog posts are often worth reading even if you don't give a sh*t about the particular game:

Our original plan was to spend the next year or so in beta, adding new features and slowly growing the number of heroes until we reached a level of parity with Dota 1, at which point we'd release Dota 2 to the world. But the feedback we're seeing everywhere is that people just want to play it, even though there's still a ton of heroes yet to be implemented. We've also seen that the folks who are already in the beta are chomping at the bit to show everyone else some of the fun games they've had. So we decided our original plan was dumb.

SOURCE