I realize its been awhile since the last installment of The Analog Gamer and there have been a few big changes in the tabletop gaming market – Wiz Kids, one time golden goat of the plastic collectible miniature market has been shuttered by its parent company Topps, Wizards of the Coast announced it was making substantial changes to the D&D miniature product line and miniature company Rackham SA (producer of sci-fi battler AT-43) disappeared into the dust.

Things are tough all over but there is some hope on the horizon. Wizkids, the owners of the Shadowrun and Battletech intellectual properties recently signed a two year deal with Catalyst games to continue producing pen-and-paper titles in both series and apparently that will continue even after the death of Wizkids. Also there is a lot of interest from other miniature makers to acquire the HeroClix line and to continue the property at another corporation.

The refocusing of Wizards of the Coast on semi-random miniatures aimed at role playing gamers is a compromise tactic that will hopefully please both the hard core players/collectors of the miniature game and people like myself who are dedicated to the pen-and-paper RPG and prefer the ability to buy the minis we need for our campaigns rather than roll the dice and pray we don’t get too many random packs containing the Farmer and Pig mini or its equivalent.

Amongst all this doom and gloom however I find some respite in my love of the undead (I know that was an odd segue but stay with me…). The recent PC release of Valve’s Left4Dead has my gaming time filled with
hordes of the rampaging undead and with grim news impacting the tabletop hobby its hard not to feel a sense of dread. Read the full article

Steam in its current form — a PC game store and Xbox Live-esque community service — does a lot of what Microsoft talked about doing years ago. But like the Live Anywhere concept, Games for Windows Live has largely drifted by the wayside. Yesterday, Microsoft released an update to GFW Live to improve upon the lackluster interface that has, so far, not come to be the unified PC gaming platform Microsoft hoped it to be. According to Shacknews, Microsoft will be releasing another update in the next few weeks that will add support for downloads of demos, videos, and DLC through a true GFW Live Marketplace application.

Microsoft has more in store than just that, though, as we learned in an interview that Shacknews had with GFW Live GM Chris Early. He said:

When we get to the place where we do distribute games digitally, will we have a digital rights management system? Maybe. Or maybe we’ll just continue to support the industry leaders in that. Because it is a hard thing to do. You talk to any of those companies, and that is their whole company, is doing digital rights management.

Asked about that first bit — regarding when Microsoft begins distributing games digitally — Early admitted, “Clearly it’s on our road map.” That initiative will come once they’ve fully rolled out their plans for allowing DLC through the Marketplace.Early believes this was the right order to release things in, claiming “this is something that you can’t do today on a PC, right? You can buy digitally through a bunch of places.” While that’s not entirely true — just look at Bethesda, who has offered DLC for games through its website — a unified place for DLC on PC isn’t a half-bad idea. Whether this means we’ll begin seeing more premium DLC on PC is unclear, but we can hope that the mod community will manage to keep that in check or, at the very least, make sure we don’t see any companies trying to sell us a set of horse armor.

Interesting news for fans of author Robert Jordan and his epic fantasy series “Wheel of Time” was broke this morning by Venture Beat. Seems that the movie studio Red Eagle Entertainment who owns the film rights to the series plans on making videogames based on the series, to coincide with the films as they are released.

This would not be the first time that Jordan’s books were translated into gaming–some of you may recall Legend Entertainment’s critically and gamer acclaimed PC title The Wheel of Time back in 1999 which had the misfortune of being released around the same time as Quake. The first-person shooter/role playing game was based on the Unreal Engine and could be played either in a linear single-player mode or through multiplayer deathmatches or capture the flag type gameplay. The Wheel of Time MUD, created by former MUME (Multi-Users in Middle-earth) is an online game based on the series and “The Wheel of Time” was also published by Wizards of the Coast as a tabletop RPG similar to Dungeons and Dragons.

Robert Jordan’s eleven books in the series sold over 44 million copies worldwide, and a twelfth is planned to be released posthumously by author Brandon Sanderson sometime in 2009. Red Eye Entertainment is currently at wok on a movie based on the first novel “The Eye of the World,” and according to Variety, it is rumored that Universal is behind it with a $150 million dollar budget.

Although laden with elements of Asian mythology combined with themes of Buddhism, Daoism and Hinduism the books have been compared as a cross between “Lord of the Rings” and “Road Warrior” which Red Eye Entertainment feels would transfer well into videogames. The company is even talking about the possibility of a “spin-off franchise” for a future massively multiplayer online game.

Red Eagle Entertainment was formed by former IBM executives Rick Selvage and Larry Mondragon in 2003 and according to Rick Selvage, they have huge plans for The Wheel of Time series:

“We’ve got a huge running start with this property. We expect to have a game based on every movie, and we expect no less than three movies, though that depends on how well each does.”

Since the games are planned to be launched at the same time as the films, Selvage plans on hiring people soon to start work on the games and the company has budgeted hundreds of millions between the games and films. Since, according to him, the project has been met with enthusiasm, he hopes that the prospect of working on a Robert Jordan game will draw in the creme-de-la-creme of programmers because he “wants to hire the rock stars”. This will be exactly what the company needs if they are to succeed in translating the series onto PCs, consoles and handhelds like they plan.

If they can bring the “Wheel of Time” series to videogames and the silver screen without gutting what made the novels popular in the first place, this could be a great thing for fans of the series and gamers alike. However, with the bad translation of games turned into movies and vice versa, it is only natural to be concerned when a fantastic and much-lauded fantasy series is being exploited in such a medium. Hopefully, Red Eye Entertainment will not fail us on this, and despite being tied to a movie, the prospect of actually playing a new game based on the books is exciting indeed–especially an MMO teaming with Myrddraal and Trollocs to fight to the death.

Let’s just hope it will fare better than the Conan books did at the hands of Funcom.

By the way, I know this is off the subject a bit, but whatever happened to the possibility of R.A. Salvatore’s Dizzt books being turned into a videogame? After seeing the awesome Drow, and my personal hero, make an appearance in the console version of Baldur’s Gate, I have not seen hide or hair of him. Maybe it was just a rumor after all, but if anyone else has heard anything about this, please drop us a line.

Struggling electronics retailer Circuit City today filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection (yes, Chapter 11, like 1UP parent company Ziff Davis Media filed for earlier this year), according to Reuters. The announcements comes just a week after the company announced it would be closing 155 stores due to the economic downturn, among other factors.

In the filing, Circuit City CFO Bruce Besanko explained the move: “In large part, a Chapter 11 filing is due to three factors, all of which contributed to a liquidity crisis that prevented the company from completing its turnaround goals outside of formal proceedings: erosion of vendor confidence, decreased liquidity and a global economic crisis.”

It’s been an absolute whirlwind of bad news recently — Gizmodo recently reported that Sony stopped shipments of their products while they were in transit to distribution centers and had them returned “among worries that Circuit City couldn’t pay for the shipments.” That remains an unconfirmed rumor, but it wouldn’t seem out of place among the rest of the bad news that’s gone on. Hopefully they pull through this; besides, where else will you go to pay to have free updates installed? Not to mention the fact that it would, y’know, put people out of work.

While Take-Two Chairman, Strauss Zelnick, may be the king of Men’s Fitness right now, there’s one place where he’s not so revered at the moment: Jim Cramer’s Mad Money. If you’ve ever flipped over to CNBC, odds are you’ve seen Cramer bring a wild amount of drama to the unlikely topic of stock trading. Part of the spectacle of the show extends to a “Wall of Shame” for businessmen who somehow cause their stocks to dwindle in the market, which found a new member recently in Zelnick (via GamePolitics). Cramer cited Take-Two’s rejection of EA’s $25.74 buyout offer as the reason for this, stating:

[EA's offer was] an offer no sane man can refuse. But Strauss Zelnick, Take-two’s chairman did just that…Welcome to the Wall of Shame, Strauss Zelnick. You managed to take a sure thing, a $25 stock and turn it into a $13 one [note: now around $12, as of this morning]. That takes talent.

Zelnick was added along with two CEOs from other companies whose stock suffered a similar fate, whom Cramer described as “The New Marx Brothers AKA The Destroyers of Capitalism As You Know It” (via CNBC). Aw, don’t feel too bad, Strauss. As long as your company keeps making great games, we’re still with you. But you have to do us one favor: no more Manhunt games. Ever.

Let’s talk about bad omens. A bad omen, for example, is when a child is spawned from the union of Satan himself and a jackal (or possibly that’s just The Omen). Another far less biblical example would be when the director of an MMORPG quits after their game has only been out for a few months. But that’s exactly what’s happening now with Age of Conan. Director Gaute Godager has now resigned form Funcom after 16 years with the company, noting that his decision to leave was largely driven by his dissatisfaction with the game. However, the game will still go on, just now in the capable hands of Anarchy Online’s Game Director and Producer, Craig Morrison. As Godager explains:

“I have done my very best making this fabulous game, but I have concluded there are elements which I am dissatisfied with. I have decided to act on this, and as a result I have chosen to leave Funcom. It is time to get new, fresh eyes on Age of Conan, and I wholeheartedly support the appointment of Craig. I have had a fantastic time these last 16 years, and I am very proud of the many things Funcom has achieved. Funcom and Conan will always be a big part of me, but as I now look to new ventures outside the gaming industry I am certain Age of Conan’s future is in the best of hands.”

I know he’s trying to sound very upbeat for all the Age of Conan players out there, but let’s face it: when the man in charge of a game quits his job of 16 years over the game in question, well, that’s certainly not good.
I guess it will be left up to the players to decide if the game still runs smoothly following this change though.

Via Kotaku

Rumors are flying surrounding EA and Take-Two negotiations. After all the time EA spent stalking T2 in an attempt at a hostile take over, it seems EA has walked out of their secret merger negotiations. According to Seeking Alpha, an investment site, T2 stock took a hit because of the rumor.

Yesterday’s session featured some strange exchanging of Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. (TTWO) shares, just one day before the company is set to release earnings.

There was no news released, though Barron’s later said that the price decline was due to rumors about Electronic Arts Inc. (ERTS) walking away from merger talks. ERTS had an executive speak at a conference right around noon.

GamePolitics finds the rumors believable given the open hostility between the two companies since the beginning of the year.

While Seeking Alpha ultimately discounts the rumor, it’s known that EA management is not especially fond of the Strauss Zelnick team at T2. That has a lot to do with the rich deal Zelnick put in place for himself and his crew in the event of an acquisition. Given that atmosphere, hardball tactics (such as a walkout) would seem to be in the realm of possibility.

I personally find it hard to believe that EA would walk out of negotiations. Playing hardball this late in the game is is fairly useless considering T2 knows just how badly EA wants to buy it out. Succeeding in dropping the value of T2 stock doesn’t change the fact that EA extended its final buyout offer deadline several times over the past year.

I can’t believe there are people out there who are seriously expecting more DLC for Crackdown — what with Realtime Worlds stating over and over that their efforts are completely focused on their upcoming APB right now — but apparently a lonely contingent of people are still demanding additional content for the one-and-a-half years old game. Well, I’ve got bad news for those people: it ain’t happening. Responding to a petition on the Crackdown forums asking for new DLC, Chris ‘Ulric’ Dye, Community Manager for Realtime, had this to say:

Unfortunately from a Realtime Worlds perspective there will not be any additional DLC for Crackdown; the company has moved onto our next Project, APB, and is 100% committed to that and other projects yet to be announced, and as such we are not in a position to work on any new Crackdown content.

…Thank you for all the support you have given Crackdown over the past 18 months, and I do hope that we can do something to repay that support in the future.

Yes, I know, it’s too bad. Now I guess all we can really hope for is that the developer will begin work on a Crackdown sequel once they wrap things up with APB.

Via Crackdown Forums

Former Nintendo Executive Perrin Kaplan voiced an opinion at PAX that is as likely to win her supporters as protests. At PAX, Kaplan had this to say about parenting at a panel session on sex and violence in videogames:

Parents who use video games as a babysitter shouldn’t have sex to begin with.

This statement taken out of context is pretty bold. As a parent, I have to agree that people that have no time or interest in their kids shouldn’t have had them in the first place. Kaplan is taking the sentiment a step further; one just short of forced sterilization.

Parenting is an awesome responsibility whether you asked for it or not. You should pay attention to what videogames you’re letting your kids watch. If you expect your kids to take care of you in your old age, make sure they have a good example to follow.

Kaplan’s new company Zebra Partners boasts that it’s “Obsessed with Connecting Brands and Consumers”. Zebra is getting ready to acquire games as soon as Kaplan’s non-compete agreement with Nintendo expires, although it’s still fairly vague about what it’ll actually be doing with them. Thanks to GamePolitics for the heads up.