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Loki to Release Heretic II and Heavy Gear II
Violator writes that Loki announced that they will be continuing their partnership with Activision - Heretic II and Heavy Gear II will be ported to Linux. The beta-testing for Heretic II begins soon. While I'm on my soap box, check out WomenGamers.com. Cool site.
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The other news (eg: Heretic II) sounds great! The more games, the better.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Actually that's the way forward.
As it stands hordes of people submit stories to Slashdot every day - these are filtered by 'The Editors' to those that are actually featured. Often there are duplicates, and masses of people think certain stories are 'dumb'.
A more advanced (plus fairer and more open) approach would be for the front page to list all submitted stories. These stories would have associated scores just like posts do today (but with more resolution/levels) and users could mark a story as '+', '-' or 'dup'. Most users wouldn't see the swarm of stories as they'd browse at, say, level '50+' stories...
With this implemented Slashdot would be self-running and the featured stories really would reflect its readership (Is that good?).
Right on! Kudos to Hemos for mentioning the site, and AC, you're exactly on the money.
Emil: Until you really look at it, you don't realize how the game market is slanted towards the 12-24 year old male. Most games are focused to their interests and taste.. because they appear to be the only market. This is marketing exec think, but it creates a nasty catch-22: the games are catered to males in a particular age bracket, and *surprise*, they sell well to that group and not so hot to the rest of the consumer base. So, the suits say "Girls don't play games, here are the sales to prove it" and shake their heads as they authorize Tomb Raider 38DD.
What I think WomenGamers.com is going to be is an example to those decision makers that female gamers do exist - so the next time someone tries to sell a game that isn't the standard teenage boy fare. They know the male gamers are out there, but need to be shown that the female ones are.
IMHO, more girls would play games if there were more games that interested them. I'm not talking about Cosmo makeup software, but a little bit of consideration would make things go a long way: female characters that are more than decoration, more realistic body depictions (how would you like to play a game in which every male character had a 14 inch penis?), hell.. maybe some beefcake to go along with the bimbettes would improve things.
As for other sexual preferences being welcome in the regular gaming scene, I say bullshit - many online gamers, protected by their anonymity, don't hesitate to harass and insult gays or other groups in the gaming minority. It's acceptable behavior on the Quake servers to say "Man, that was gay!" or "You cock-sucking camper!" - not a friendly environment to anyone but the straight teenage male, IMHO.
A lot of gaming is still the clubhouse with a "Girls/Fags/Dykes Keep Out" sign on the door. That's fine and dandy - it's their money/server/bandwidth - but whining about the outcasts setting up their own club is uncalled for.
[No connection to the web site, just found it. Blah, blah, blah. Don't get insulted if you're the exception to the above stereotypes, I'm talking about the majorty.]
The 2-year, 5-game deal is more interesting (to me) than the specific titles. According to one interview, Civ:CTP isn't part of that deal, which means there are three more guaranteed Activision games. Anyone care to guess?
Similarly, the news about the remaining (unannounced) games of 1999 are that one is an RPG. There is a rumor (in the latest Linux Magazine) that a Sim game may be the other. Speculation, anyone? I'm hoping for SimCity3000 for the latter =)
It is such a pleasure to be able to go home and play games on my Linux box...
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