A Picture Worth More Than Words [Stick Jockey]

January 2, 2010 by admin
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At the bottom of the house, at the bottom of a foot locker, at the bottom of a page of newsprint from 1970 were these words. “That’s all the Good sports for now,” the sign-off to my father’s sports column. I can’t remember why my brother and I were down in the basement going through Dad’s old stuff that day, but reading that kicker, I knew then I wanted to become a sports writer. I even used the same valedictory once when I was a college sports writer, taking a ribbing for using, by then, a rather dated means to close out my own column. Fifteen years later, I’m back behind a keyboard with sports as a weekly subject, although in a bit of a different way, with a bit of a different readership. I absolutely promise not to plagiarize lines four decades old. But today, with your indulgence, this will be a column more about sports than video games, although it’s illustrated with the help of one. You see, at the end of this past year, Dad closed a 40-year career in newspapers. He had edited one he started with a colleague in 2007 and, before that, had been publisher of the paper in my hometown for nearly 30 years. If Dad leaves with a legacy, it is one of leading newspapers that insisted on local governments doing the public’s business – all of it – publicly, and of holding officials accountable for that, on behalf of those they both served. But on some level Dad’s always been a sports writer to me, and more than just because he raised me with an interest in the same sports he loves. It was his first job out of college, where he wrote a column at Winston-Salem’s Twin City Sentinel while waiting for my mother to graduate, and it was his duty when they married and moved to the town where I and my brother were raised. Dad went to Elkin, N.C., in the early 1970s to be the editor of its small, then twice-weekly newspaper. It had no sports editor at the time, so the title also meant he was also its sports writer. Small town newsmen, then as now, must take their own pictures, whether or not they’re trained photographers. Snapping broad daylight photos of big fish or check presentations or potatoes that look like Richard Nixon is one thing. The task is infinitely more complex, and critical, when you’re covering the nighttime action of high school football in a blanket-mill town where that’s the only thing worth reading in a weekend edition. Working for Dad years later, I would confess the mortal fear I had of coming home from a game with no usable art. A strong vertical shot not only anchors a front, it keeps you from writing another 20 column inches just to fill out the three pages that advertising finally booked for you. In my time, we sent color film off to a local 24-hour processor, praying that what came back the next morning matched what was in the mind’s eye the night before. When Dad was a sports writer, he was in a darkroom at midnight developing black and white photos off of two-inch negatives himself. And he had a trick to ensure, no matter what, that he always left the game with a magazine-quality image ready for print. With the game all but won, Dad would sidle up to the Elkin head coach, a guy by the name of Harry Jennings, and innocently suggest the Elks run a sweep to their side of the field, where Dad would be waiting with perfect aperture, film speed and flash already set. Inevitably, Jennings would comply, knowing that it would get his players in a big photo and it would make all their parents proud to cut it out. And the picture usually looked like this: the running back coming at you, hard into the frame, driving for the corner, ball tucked, shoulder lowered, throwing out the classic Heisman Trophy stiffarm. Worked like a charm every time, Dad said. • • • I was born in the very early morning on a Thursday in 1973. That year, the Elkin varsity played on Thursdays. After my delivery, Dad took a long rest, got up and put on a tie – newspaper writers, no matter the circulation, always wore ties in those days. Then he went to the old office on Market Street and grabbed his Yashica Mat-124 and several rolls of film, and headed down to Memorial Park Drive for Elkin high school football. There he covered the game from the sideline, keeping track of whole offensive drives, players’ cumulative yardage, completions, turnovers, the entire contest seen through his eyes and no one else’s. All of this written into a notebook the width of his back pocket. All of this while peering down into a dual-lens box camera he held waist high. And stripped across the bottom of the front page on Friday, Sept. 28, 1973, the first newspaper of my life, was his story of this game, and his signature photograph: Elkin on the toss sweep, the split end out, patrolling for trouble, the halfback turning upfield to meet the defense, his blue jersey and gold helmet rendered in black and white, arm flung out perfectly in the Heisman pose. And the picture credited to Rebel Good.

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A Picture Worth More Than Words [Stick Jockey]

Tags: Blue, elkin, Games, heisman, House, mind, News, Night, signature, Sports, stick jockey, Time

Play Drums With Animal On Your iPhone [IPhone Games]

December 16, 2009 by admin
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There is now an iPhone game that allows you to play drums against Animal from The Muppet Show . Truly we live in an age of wonders. Walt Disney has released The Muppets Animal Drummer on the iTunes App Store, allowing players to rock out with the world’s greatest practitioner of the drumming art. You can play through classic mode, or import your own tunes in free play mode, and there’s even a record function that saves your performance so Animal can reproduce it in his signature style. The Muppets Animal Drummer is now available for purchase for a mere $1.99. I’m going to go ahead and call it: this is the iPhone’s killer app.

Tags: Animal, iphone, iphone games, ipod touch, itunes, muppet-show, muppets-animal, News, posts-tagged, record-function, signature, video game

World of Warcraft Turns 5: How Blizzard Built A Nation [World Of Warcraft]

November 23, 2009 by admin
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World of Warcraft was launched five years ago today, and Kotaku is celebrating all week long, starting with a look at the Warcraft franchise’s fifteen-year history with key members of Blizzard’s development team. World of Warcaft is important. The developers tell Kotaku they even dared to dream that they’d some day get a million subscribers. But to tell the story of the fifth anniversary of WoW, we first have to look at the game that started 15 years ago, Warcraft. It All Started On Arrakis In 1992, Westwood Studios released a game that changed the way real-time strategy games were made. It was Dune II, the first RTS to incorporate mouse movement, resource gathering, technology trees, and unique weapons and units per faction, all elements that are still being used in RTS games today. The game caught the eyes and imaginations of several members of Silicon & Synapse, a game development studio that had mainly focused on porting games from other studios. After a brief stint as Chaos Games the studio took on the name Blizzard Entertainment in 1994. As Blizzard art director Sam “Samwise” Didier explains it, the team’s fascination with Dune II led directly to the development of its first blockbuster hit, Warcraft: Orcs & Humans. “Back in the Jurassic period we all loved playing games like Dune II. We got inspired and thought this game was awesome and wanted to make something like it. We were all big fans of Dungeons and Dragons and Tolkien, and we wanted to make a fantasy world real-time strategy game.” Taking cues from existing titles was the norm for Blizzard in the early days. Samwise points to another early Blizzard title, The Lost Vikings, which was born out of the team’s love for PC puzzle game Lemmings from DMA Design, the studio that would go on to become Rockstar North of Grand Theft Auto fame. So Blizzard took the formula established in Dune II and expanded upon it in Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, adding goals beyond simply building your army and decimating your enemies. Players found themselves rescuing friendly forces from enemy camps, assassinating key members of the opposition, and rebuilding ruined towns. It was also the first RTS game to feature hand-to-hand combat and magic. One more important innovation was borrowed from a decidedly different sort of game – Doom. Inspired by the fun of playing Doom together, Blizzard added the ability to play multiplayer battles via modem and local area network to Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, a feature that would become a key feature of the RTS genre. Expanding The Story While Orcs & Humans laid the groundwork for games to come, it was relatively light on story. Blizzard rectified that oversight with the game’s 1995 sequel, Warcraft II : Tides of Darkness, elevating Azeroth from game setting to fully realized fictional world. The game saw the Orcs and Humans gather allies in the Trolls, Goblins, Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, and Gnomes, laying the foundations for the Alliance and the Horde as we know them today. The game and it’s expansion pack, Beyond the Dark Portal, introduced characters and locations that would play a large part in the games to come. Tides of Darkness also expanded on the multiplayer of the original game. In 1999, Blizzard released both the game and its expansion as Warcraft II: Battle.net Edition, allowing players to engage in multiplayer matches over the internet using the Battle.net service introduced with 1997’s Diablo. Class Clowns And Failed Comedians Along with solidifying the world of Azeroth and strengthening the foundation for the fiction that would grow with each new game in the franchise, Warcraft II also established another signature feature of the series: its sense of humor. “We had lots of class clowns and failed comedians on the team,” explains Didier. “We never really took it too seriously. We wanted really cool characters and events while making fun classic fantasy stereotypes. We included anything we thought was cool, serious or humorous.” For instance, clicking on a unit once in Warcraft II elicits a normal verbal response. Click repeatedly on a unit for no reason and they become annoyed, spouting humorous phrases like “are you still touching me?” Samwise cites this feature as a prime example of adding humor to a game without alienating those craving a serious experience. “Only the people who wanted the comedy had to deal with it.” The Lost Chapter As Warcraft was inspired by Dune II, Warcraft Adventures : Lord of the Clans was inspired by classic LucasArts adventure games like The Secret of Monkey Island. Development on this adventure game began soon after the completion of Warcraft II. Using a combination of cartoons and point and click adventure gameplay it would tell the story of the Orcs trapped in Azeroth following the destruction of the Dark Portal, and the rise of the famed Orc warchief Thrall, Sadly, the game never saw the light of day. In a move that Blizzard would later repeat with StarCraft side-story Ghost, the company canceled the game days before the 1998 E3 Expo in Atlanta, despite the game being mostly complete. The animation was finished, the puzzles in place, and even the voice over work had been fully recorded, but Blizzard felt the game wasn’t up to their high standards. In an announcement issued on the 22nd of May, 2008, Blizzard explained the cancellation to fans. “The decision centered around the level of value that we want to give our customers. In essence, it was a case of stepping up and really proving to ourselves and gamers that we will not sell out on the quality of our games.” When asked if there was ever a chance of Adventures being released, Samwise was skeptical. “We’re not taking the old one and finishing it. It wasn’t up to par and we’d have to polish the hell out of it. DVDs are really popular because of deleted scenes, but when you watch them you can see why they weren’t included in the movie. That’s what Warcraft Adventures is.” Still, Blizzard felt the story of Thrall too important to gloss over, commissioning Star Trek novelist Christie Golden to write Warcraft: Lord of the Clans , a novel that bridges the gap between Warcraft II and the next game in the series, Warcraft III : Reign of Chaos. Further Evolution Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, released in 2002, delved deeper into the lore of the series than ever before. It chronicles the rise and fall of Arthas Menethil, the prince who would become the Lich King; introduces the Night Elves and the Undead; and introduces the Burning Legion, the demonic scourge of the Warcraft universe. Deviating from previous entries in the series, Warcraft III and its expansion, The Frozen Throne, integrates storytelling into the gameplay itself, rather than feeding the player through mission briefings. This allowed for a more seamless and immersive game, further cementing Blizzard’s reputation as top-notch storytellers. Warcraft III, like Warcraft II, included a World Editor program, allowing players to craft their own scenarios and maps, and players took full advantage of the feature, creating their own game types. One such custom game, Defense of the Ancients, gave rise to a new sub-genre of RTS, in which players control a single champion that gains levels and abilities as it battles alongside computer-controlled units. Defense of the Ancients-inspired games like Gas Powered Games’ Demigod and the recently released League of Legends from Riot Games serve as a lasting reminder to the legacy of Warcraft III. Welcome To Our World In early 2000, Blizzard’s development team found themselves fascinated by another type of game. “Everyone here had been playing a bunch of Everquest and Ultima Online,” says Samwise Didier. “It goes all the way back to the whole Lost Vikings/Lemmings thing. It was a genre we enjoyed, and Warcraft was a good fit.” Blizzard announced World of Warcraft, the massively multiplayer take on the Warcraft universe in 2001, and for three years fans eagerly awaited their chance to take their first steps into the world of Azeroth, unfettered by the rules of the real-time strategy genre. The game would pick up the story four years after the events of Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, with the world split into two major factions – the Alliance and the Horde. Players would experience the battle for Azeroth from an entirely new, more personal point-of-view. As the 2004 release approached, Blizzard was aware it had something special on its hands, though some members of the development team had more faith than others. World of Warcraft production director J. Allen Brack relates a particularly amusing story about a pep talk given by Blizzard co-founder and lead designer Allen Adham. “Allen Adham got everyone on the team in a room to talk about how great his confidence was in the game, and how he thought we had something great. He said, ‘One day this game will have a million subscribers.’ No one believed that. We thought it was crazy. We thought, ‘You’re a liar.’ There was no way that any game would have a million subscribers.” World of Warcraft launched in North America on November 23, 2004. Fan reaction to the release was so massive that the game was plagued with downtime and server queues for the first week, as Blizzard opened new worlds to deal with the exploding population. By December 2005, the game had 3.5 million subscribers. By December of 2008, that number had jumped to 11.5 million . How does a PC game attract 11.5 million players? World of Warcraft game director Tom Chilton says the game has something for everyone. “It’s easy to learn, but hard to master, which attracts different sorts of gamers. The hard to master part keeps the hardcore players around, while the casual players enjoy the wide variety of things to do,” Chilton explains. “Ultimately it’s just a really good game.” Massively Mainstream Appeal The success that World of Warcraft has achieved over the past five years is nothing short of astounding. It was the best-selling PC game of 2005 and 2006 according to NPD data, knocked from the top spot in 2007 by its own expansion, The Burning Crusade. In 2008 the game’s second expansion, The Frozen Throne, took the top spot. The success of the game goes far beyond sales numbers. World of Warcraft has become a pop culture phenomenon. It’s been used to advertise products like Coke and Toyota , while its own advertisements have feature pop culture icons such as Mr. T and William Shatner. A 2007 episode of Comedy Central’s cartoon South Park, “Make Love, Not Warcraft,” won the 2007 Creative Arts Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program. Like Super Mario Bros. or Grand Theft Auto, World of Warcraft is a game that has gained recognition far beyond its already expansive audience. For a fantasy game that is strictly PC-based, that’s no mean feat. The Future So where will the World of Warcraft be in another five years? Tom Chilton delivers a blissfully blurry outlook for the world’s most popular subscription-based MMO. “One of the cool things is: who knows where it will go next? The world itself is filled with so many possibilities. We’ve got outer space demons. We’re about to add little green guys and werewolves (in the upcoming Cataclysm expansion). There are so many different directions you can go in. Magic, guns, machines – anything we want to come up with we can fit into the World of Warcraft with no problem.” And the continuing success of World of Warcraft doesn’t preclude the possibility of a Warcraft IV. Just don’t expect it any time soon, with teams tied up with Diablo III and StarCraft II. Real-time strategy or massively multiplayer, the Warcraft universe continues to make its mark on the world, with each new game and expansion adding layer upon layer to a tale that J. Allen Brack believes could go on forever. “We’ve got quite a bit to do before we run out of ideas. New people are constantly joining the team, bringing their own ideas with them. The full story will never truly be written.” Check back all week for more stories related to World of Warcraft’s fifth anniversary .

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World of Warcraft Turns 5: How Blizzard Built A Nation [World Of Warcraft]

Tags: development, Games, Humans, light, Microsoft, prince, signature, Warcraft, wow turns five

Dynasty Warriors: Strikeforce Brings The Online Multiplayer In February [Release Date]

November 20, 2009 by admin
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Koei has announced a February release date for Dynasty Warriors: Strikeforce for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, the first game in the series to feature online multiplayer , as well as Ninja Gaiden guest stars. An upgraded version of the PSP game for console players, Dynasty Warriors: Strikeforce brings the battle for ancient China online, allowing up to four players to participate in raids, take on giant enemies, or simply battle it out competitively. Strikeforce also features new Fury transformations, drastically changing the look of your character, granting them new powers, enhanced speed, and the ability to fly. It almost sounds like they’ve taken a page from Dynasty Warriors: Gundam. The console version features more than 40 exclusive missions, an enemy Hyperbreak gauge, command of up to three AI-controlled officers in single player mode, a new character, and the ability to trade officers online with other players. Now how much would you pay? But wait, there’s more! Both versions of the game will feature exclusive guest characters, with the PlayStation 3 version scoring folks from Tecmo’s Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 , and characters from Warriors Orochi 2 for the 360 version. Completing challenges with these guest characters allows players to use their signature weapons in combat. All of this, plus planned DLC to keep the game fresh for a long time coming. It sounds like a Dynasty Warriors fan’s dream come true. Dynasty Warriors: Strikeforce hits store shelves on February 16th.

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Dynasty Warriors: Strikeforce Brings The Online Multiplayer In February [Release Date]

Tags: ability, hyperbreak, kotaku, ninja-gaiden, online-multiplayer, PlayStation, PS3, release-date, releasedate, signature, version-scoring, video game, warriors-orochi, Xbox, Xbox 360