BioWare was suppose to announced something splendid regarding Dragon Age yesterday, and instead just revealed that the game would now henceforth be called: Dragon Age: Origins and launched the website. Very anti-climatic if I do say so myself – especially since the website really does not contain anything other than “check out a trailer debuting on SpikeTV Friday night at 1:00 a.m.”

Nothing against the good folks at BioWare though, they are just trying to drum up even more hype for their highly anticipated dark-fantasy PC RPG epic. However, just in case you do not get SpikeTV, rest assuredly, the trailer will be all over the web come Friday afternoon – plus BioWare plans to divvy out the assets come E3 next week.

Gaming Today will be there (do I need to constantly remind you of that?) so, be sure and stay glued to the site next week for more information.

Via: Actiontrip

In a recent chat with MTV’s Multiplayer Blog, BioWare’s co-CEO Greg Zeschuk revealed that the company is considering developing games for the iPhone due to its “cultural and technical success”.

Stating that BioWare has decided to “take a close look” at developing games for it, Zeschuk went on to say:

“We look at every platform that comes along. Obviously, something that’s as big a cultural and technical success as the iPhone is something you really got to take a close look at. Certainly, there’s nothing written in stone yet but we’ve got a lot of folks looking at it.

“It’s intriguing. I think one of the things that we’ll have to see how it shakes out is what type of consumer buys games on it and what type of experience they’re looking for. You want to always mash the consumer experience with what you’re building. We want to understand what people are going to do with it. Who knows. We’re definitely looking at every platform.”

I guess more people play games on their mobile phones than I, personally, would imagine. I just recently became the owner of a new Samsung Instinct, which is suppose to be a competitor to the iPhone and I have yet to download games, because to be honest with you, it has enough on it to keep me occupied without playing games on it. If I plan on sitting in the Doctor’s office or waiting on my car to get the oil changed and just HAVE to play a game, I will just bring along my DS. Otherwise, the MP3’s on my phone or my iPod for that matter will suffice. I just don’t like playing games on a phone, but more power to those that do and I am happy they enjoy them.

Via: GamesIndustry.biz

Channel Flip is hosting a video mini series on Mac gaming. Your video host Katharine is kicking off Mac Gaming 101 with native gaming options for the Mac.

Now, much as we all love our various Mac computers here at ChannelFlip, we’re ready to admit that the issue of gaming has long been a thorn in the side of Apple fans.

But the perception that you have to have a high powered Windows PC for gaming on a computer, combined with a lack of publicity for the growing Mac gaming industry, means that a surprising number of people aren’t aware of what you can achieve gaming wise on a Mac.

Some of the games that can be played on the Mac include Unreal Tournament 3, Neverwinter Nights 2, Guitar Hero 3, The Sims 2: Castaway Stories, Fable: The Lost Chapters and World of Warcraft.

via ChannelFlip

Anthony Davis, one of the Obsidian Entertainment Developers, has posted an example of the the new Party Conversation System for Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir. In case you missed the announcement, Storm of Zehir is the second expansion for NWN2.

Davis is a programmer implementing the system in SoZ. Here’s his explaination of how the system should work. Remember that SoZ, like the original NWN2, is based on D&D 3.5.
Read the full article »

Tony Evans, Lead Designer on the second Neverwinter Nights 2 expansion Storm of Zehir, took time to answer a few questions on the upcoming title. SoZ is a “return to roots” which should make hardcore role-players happy. Evans also promises that gameplay has been streamlined to make it more accessible and easier for casual players.

Unlike Mask of the Betrayer which started players out at level 18, SoZ starts at level three capping at 30. Players will find themselves in a war ravaged world where the locals are trying to pick up the pieces of their lives. There’ll be many opportunities in Samarach and the Sword Coast to help people recover from their tragedies or to exploit the chaos for personal gain.

Evans promises SoZ features full party customization, dungeon crawling, and open sandbox-style exploration with more role-playing than either the original or MotB. For all the gritty details, read the entire Q&A with Tony Evans on CVG.

Ideazon’s Zboard standard, gaming and Age of Conan models get a thorough review from MMORPG.

While the verdict on the standard Zboard is less than stellar, the gaming Zboard gets plenty of kudos. The board comes with over 50 key mapping templates for a wide variety of games including Battlefield 2142, Call of Duty 4, EverQuest II, City of Villains, World of Warcraft and Bioshock others (there are in total).

However, according to the reviewer, all those awesome looking Age of Conan Zboards are as good as you might hope. Many of the Conan specific keys for: Say, Shout, Tell, Reply, Follow, AFK, Invite, Kick, Auto Run and various emotes simply don’t function. As if that wasn’t enough to give it an unfavorable review MMORPG has one last shot to take at the AoC Zboard.

I also have to say that Ideazon really missed the boat with this keyboard. I was honestly surprised when I opened the set to find the right hand side inhabited by the invite, kick, inventory, etc. keys. It seemed like a no-brainer to me that an Age of Conan specific keyboard should capitalize on the game’s unique combat system. Instead of having those fairly secondary keys on the right hand side, the designers could have placed the specialized keys on the left hand side and incorporated movement and attacks into a more comfortable configuration than WASD and 12345 currently offer. Directional attacks at the very least should have been represented with specialized keys. They weren’t. Boo, hiss Ideazon, boo, hiss.

via MMORPG

Drew Karpyshyn, author and writer for the Knights of the Old Republic video game, talks about working with BioWare and his Science fiction including the Darth Bane Star Wars novels.

Karpyshyn is very confident in his abilities and short comings as well. He revels in his “functionally ugly” website that he programed himself; as well as his part in bringing gamers KOTOR.

Hmmm… how can I say this without sounding arrogant? It actually felt more like I’d fallen into a position that my whole life had been leading up to. I’ve basically been a Star Wars fan for 30 years, and a role-playing game fan for 25, a video game fan for 20, and a writer/story teller my whole life. Obviously I appreciate how lucky I was to find the opportunity, but it almost felt inevitable once I was in the position.

Karpyshyn fields questions on his work with Wizards of the Coast and on being published. In addition to his Darth Bane series, he’s novelized Baldur’s Gate II: Throne of Bhaal. Read up on this author on Galaticbinder.com.

EA CEO John Riccitiello has given the upcoming RPG Dragon Age his vote of confidence. At the William Blair & Company’s 28th Annual Growth Stock Conference, Riccitiello stated that there was no risk involved for EA with the title.

“(Dragon Age) speaks to a very, very, very important audience,” said Riccitiello. “This is a core RPG created for fans that love (BioWare), and it’s about dragons. This is not risky. This is an audience that we know, that we can deliver for and generate very substantial profits by doing so.”

I would say that Dragon Age does have a pretty good chance of going over well with the RPG crowd. BioWare has a well deserved reputation for excellence. However, that’s no guarantee that gamers will take to Dragon Age. Players are steadily becoming more selective of where they spend their hard earned cash.

via StrategyInformer

It looks like the controversial DRM for the PC version of Mass Effect is rearing its ugly head once more. Prior to the game’s release, many gamers were upset when they learned that Mass Effect’s copy protection software essentially required internet re-authentication every ten days. After a fierce outcry from the gaming public, EA dropped the authentication aspect of the copy protection, but did still limit the game from being installed on more than three computers. Many assumed that this would be a similar case to BioShock’s DRM, which would allow you to install the game on another computer, provided you uninstalled it from another first. Apparently though, this is not the case with Mass Effect.

Recently, a few consumers have noticed that simply uninstalling the game doesn’t give you an activation back. A thread on Mass Effect’s forums shows the odd runaround one consumer was given in his efforts to find out if this really was the case. Finally, he received this simple answer:

Unfortunately, you will not gain an activation by uninstalling the game.

So essentially, you get to install the game three times. That’s it. Any more than that is probably going to involve you contacting EA Support line, which is probably inviting unnecessary pain.

Of course, this raises almost as many issues as the previous DRM controversy. For one, it pretty much kills the used market for this game, since the disc is basically worthless after three installs. For another, PC gamers tend to uninstall and re-install programs all the time, so this is something that’s bound to affect a lot of people. Besides all that though, this just comes back to how ridiculous it is to treat legitimate customers like criminals. I’ll bet the people who bought Mass Effect on the PC are real happy to learn all this after the game’s been on store shelves for awhile.

Via The Consumerist