Slashdot Mirror

MaryAlan writes "The National Summit on Video Games, Youth, and Public Policy was this weekend, and almost no one from the game media showed up. In fact, the game industry seems to pretty much be ignoring the whole event. There's an article up on GamesFirst, which attended the summit, that criticizes the mainstream game press pretty hard for not attending. Apparently only one game journalist showed up. From the article: 'The video game media owes it to our readers to come to events like this and listen, come here and think, and come here and base our editorials on the reality of what's being said instead of an interpretation of the talking points that are published afterwords. Too many of the people discussing these issues in forums do so based on the works of the game media, and too few in the gaming media are spending the time to make it justified.'"

An anonymous reader writes "In an interesting move, Nokia has decided to kill off the N-Gage hardware but carry on with the N-Gage name; a name branded as a failure by most of the gaming media. Still, Nokia has announced they'll be re-introducing the N-Gage as a gaming service for the Nokia network. You'll be able to download games that are very reminiscent of the N-Gage from their online service. This actually fits well into Nokia's statements when they announced the death of the N-Gage hardware. They said they would be focusing on their cell phones as a gaming platform in general, instead of just one or two."

An anonymous reader writes "Built on a network that automatically bans gamers that have modified their Xbox, Xbox Live should be nearly cheat-proof. However, it's not, as anyone playing Halo 2 online already knows. How do cheaters on Xbox Live manage to artificially boost their rankings? What is Bridging? What is Standby? This article takes a look at what exactly is done when a cheater cheats, and what exactly Bungie is doing about it. It includes videos and some very funny letters from 13-year-olds that have been baned from matchmaking on Live and are desperately trying to worm their way back onto the system."

Robotron23 writes "Jack Thompson has commenced his attack on The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion by seeking appearances on several talk shows. A press release announcing his availability speaks of Take Two not having 'learned its lesson' over the Hot Coffee scandal, before continuing to detail the issues surrounding Oblivion's re-rating, in particular regarding nudity - concluding that the game content will spawn 'an even worse disaster' than occurred during Hot Coffee."

An anonymous reader writes "Thanks to an odd glitch in the game that prevents him from completing the Knights of the White Stallion quest, Shawn has figured out how to keep himself a mighty fine Orc wife, Mazoga. Once she went on adventures with him. Now she lives in his house in Tamriel, and he can't get her to leave. He visits her when he's in the city, tired after his days of adventuring. He's thinking about buying her a kitchen set. Maybe a living room. Hands down, it's the best Oblivion glitch to date."

An anonymous reader writes "An article on GamesFirst discusses how much better Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion would be if it supported true physics acceleration. From the article: 'Oblivion lacks Casual Physics, and the result is a splendidly beautiful world that still requires a blind eye in order to buy into the environment...' How would Oblivion be different if there were more than just Rag-Doll physics, if bad guys reacted to the swing of your sword, or if mist realistically moved around you as you walked."

heartless_ wrote to mention a GamesFirst article exploring whether or not Xbox 360 Discs are large enough for their expected content. From the article: "The first Prince of Persia occupied 2.44 gigs, the second 2.88, an increase of only 18%. Knights of the Old Republic went from 3.65 gigs in the first installment to 3.99 gigs in the second, a 9% increase. The Splinter Cell series went from 3.71 gigs in the first to 3.05 gigs in Pandora's Tomorrow, a reduction of 18% (though it should be noted that Chaos Theory, after switching development houses, ballooned into one of the largest games on the Xbox at 5.62 gigabytes). So the assumption that games, by their nature, grow in size as they evolve is not absolutely true. They do become more complex, but not necessarily at the expense of filesize."

Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to a Gamesindustry.biz report that Argonaut's flagship title, Malice, has been cancelled by publisher Vivendi Universal. This 3D platform title was one of the first ever demonstrated for the Xbox, during Bill Gates' 2001 unveiling of the console, and had more recently added a PS2 version, plus Gwen Stefani of No Doubt's voice for the lead character. The former Starfox developer "..does hope to find a new deal for the game [Malice]", so we may still see it eventually. Also in Argonaut's disappointing news was the fact that their 3D beat-em-up Orchid has been cancelled by Namco - though Namco are still publishing their quirky I-Ninja action title.

You've been hearing about it (and hearing about it) for months -- the Linux-based gaming console in the works from a company called Indrema. Now you can ask the questions that are on your mind about it (like when it will really and truly arrive, in the hooked-up-and-running-Quake sense, say) and get answers from company founder and CEO John Gildred. (More below.)

Post below your questions for Gildred; you may want to check out previous articles here on Slashdot (#1, #2, #3, #4 (the one Hemos just posted)), as well as other recent interviews with Gildred at womengamers.com and GamesFirst and LinuxGames.com, or even the Indrema Web site, to find previous answers you'd like Gildred to qualify, clarify or expand on as well. No sense asking the obvious, after all -- but I'd sure like to know "When?", "When?!", and "When?!" I'd hoped to have pre-ordered one of these machines already, but the introduction date has been revised a few times, and always in the wrong direction. Hopefully, though, a longer wait means a cooler console.