Smile and wave at the Mass Effect 3 voice actors

Let’s do a collective “Squee!” quickly, because Mass Effect 3 is mere weeks away. This means Electronic Arts and BioWare are about to kick into Hyper Punt Mode, and to kick things off they’ve put together a three-minute clip with all of the top actors lending their voices to the various Mass Effect characters.

Of course, nothing drives hype and awareness quite like reveals, and this clip is no exception. IGN’s video presenter Jessica Chobot has been added as a character model and voice actor in Mass Effect 3, much like Yvonne Strahovski plays Miranda Lawson.

Hit the jump for the video and revel in all of the new game footage. I haven’t been as excited as I should have been for Mass Effect 3, but this character promo clip has pretty much fixed that.

Posted by Miklós Szecsei Feb 01, 2012

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Huh, so the Online Pass for SSX doesn’t sound unfair

You can thank Electronic Arts for the Online Pass phenomenon that’s now more common than not in games. It all started when the publisher decided to stick it to the second-hand sales market by launching “Project $10”.

Most of the time, the game’s online capabilities are hidden behind these Online Pass activation codes. Sometimes, as is the case with Batman: Arkham City and more recently the upcoming Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, single player content his held ransom by these Online Passes. This is ordinarily not such an issue, but for first-hand gamers without a reliable internet connection, they effectively remain locked out of content they are entitled to.

EA’s upcoming snowboarding game SSX falls under the EA Sports publishing label and as such will have an Online Pass of its own. This time, however, it actually sounds kind of fair. You’re not going to be locked out of multiplayer if you buy the game second hand.

Posted by Miklós Szecsei Feb 01, 2012

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Kingdoms of Amalur online pass explained

Destructoid’s Jim Sterling has managed to create a bit of a PR disaster for Electronic Arts and 38 Studios’ upcoming action RPG Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. Upon receiving his review copy of the game, he noticed an included voucher that granted him access to the “House of Valor faction quests”, which added seven different quests to the main game.

This raised the question: why is a single player game having an entire set of faction quests hidden behind an online pass? If Kingdoms of Amalur had an online multiplayer component then perhaps it would make sense to bundle an Online Pass, but single player content now as well?

This has caused a bit of a stir online, with the game’s own forums accumulating a 49 page thread in a matter of hours; the thread is entitled “Did you push back at EA at all over this? Quest content gated by online pass.”

Posted by Miklós Szecsei Jan 30, 2012

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Cocky twits exploit PunkBuster, ban honest players

A hacking and cheating forum called ArtificialAiming has hacked Battlefield 3 servers that are running the anti-cheating software PunkBuster. The reason: to ban honest players so as to prove how shaky the anti-cheating protocols are for Battlefield 3.

Focusing on third-party anti-cheating tools GGC and PBBans, junior members of ArtificialAiming have managed to issue bans to over 150 honest Battlefield 3 players. They’ve managed this by “framing” the user accounts so that the anti-cheating systems kick in to ban the player.

According to the cocky little buggers hacking group: “We are bringing back the unerring of PunkBuster back for a third season. We have selected GGC-stream as the target since they have the most streaming BF3 servers and makes it very easy to add fake bans. In 2011 we hit them with a mass ban-wave, and now we are banning real players from Battlelog while GGC-stream is totally unaware. We have framed 150-plus BF3 players alone.”

Posted by Miklós Szecsei Jan 25, 2012

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Old Republic player uses meme, gets banned

In this week’s episode of Unnecessary Permanent Bans Stemming From Ineptitude, we join a Star Wars: The Old Republic user as they recount their last few moments in that online galaxy far, far away. How did they get banned? Why, posting on the Old Republic forum of course; it’s similar in nature to what EA has been doing with the string of Origin bans.

This time around, the team that monitors BioWare’s public forums needs an education in memes. They banned a player because he or she posted “I’m 12 and what is this?”. Obviously, the super-officious mod members jumped on this and “permanently suspended” the player’s account, thereby locking them out of the forums and the MMO. They cited a breach of the EULA which does not allow anyone under the age of thirteen to make an account.

The post was a meme response; the meme in question is obvious to those who know it, which clearly does not include BioWare’s mod team. You can read more about the meme here, but in the meantime here’s hoping that somebody from BioWare and EA fixes this. Depending on how you look at it, this could be a glaring example of internet ineptitude, or a shining example of how meme users should be treated online. Take your pick.

Source: Destructoid

Posted by Miklós Szecsei Jan 23, 2012

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Aaaaand now The Sims has Katy Perry in it

If you were ludicrously famous but at the same time totally into gaming, then you too could (probably) star in a videogame. Electronic Arts, realising that there was a Sims marketing method that they’d yet to tap into, has signed Katy Perry to be the face and advertising work mule for the sixth expansion pack, The Sims 3: Showtime.

In Showtime your sims can become famous through new entertainment careers like singers, magicians, DJs etc. The Katy Perry mix is a no-brainer insofar as becoming a famous singer is concerned. However, her game extras are only available via the collector’s edition of the expansion, which is entitled (deep breath): The Sims 3: Showtime: Katy Perry Collector’s Edition.

While the singer won’t make a digital appearance in the game, loads of her trademark stuff will, like oversized fruit props, fruit clothing and weirdly coloured wigs. This new celebrity endorsement could, quite possibly, be used in the future as a textbook example of knowing your target audience. It’s an odd cross-over, but the combined commercial potential of another Sims 3 expansion and Katy Perry is both amazing and terrifying. If you feel like subjecting yourself to it, there’s a trailer after the jump. Also, on the bright side, it could have been Justin Bieber.

Posted by Miklós Szecsei Jan 18, 2012

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Mass Effect 3 requires Origin (act surprised)

I know! Nobody saw this coming either so don’t feel too bad about it: Mass Effect 3 will require Origin if you’re playing Commander Shepard’s final space outing on PC. If you’re shrugging and thinking “oh well, I’ll just wait for it to come to Steam” then think again, because EA has confirmed that Steam won’t catch a whiff of Mass Effect 3.

Publisher Electronic Arts believes Steam inhibits interaction with customers; this is the reason that previous EA titles like Dragon Age 2 were pulled from Valve’s digital distribution platform. This doesn’t mean that Mass Effect 3 won’t be coming to other digital platforms though.

Regardless of where you buy your copy, you’ll still need Origin in order to play the game, whether it’s a physical copy or digital copy from, for example, Direct2Drive.

Posted by Miklós Szecsei Jan 16, 2012

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Let’s talk The Old Republic numbers!

EA and BioWare’s MMORPG Star Wars: The Old Republic is certainly proving popular, with some people having to “stand” in online queues before they can even get onto the more populated servers. The game has been active since 20 December 2011 (longer if you count the early access invites that were issued to a bajillion people) and now we’ve got industry analyst firms chiming in about the most important aspect of any MMO out there: numbers.

One such analyst firm is Baird Equity Research (no relation to Damon S. Baird – I checked) which believes that the Star Wars MMORPG has attained a concurrent online user number of 350 000. According to Baird Equity Research this indicates “an early success” for the fledgling MMO but the firm also believes it’s indicative of a “viable market for multiple million-user MMOs in the US and Europe”. That’s great news for EA considering they’re about to co-publish The Secret World with Funcom.

All this back-patting might be a little premature; it’ll be interesting to see what happens with the numbers once the initial, bundled 30-day access codes finish and people are forced to pay for further subscriptions.

Source: GamesIndustry.biz

Posted by Miklós Szecsei Jan 03, 2012

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Queue, or queue not. There is no try.

EA and BioWare’s years in development MMORPG Star Wars: The Old Republic officially launched on 20 December 2011. That makes the online galaxy far, far away about three days old. Bless it; it’s so small and vulnerable and hassled by teething problems.

Word on the interwebs is that people are loving the game; that’s great news for EA and BioWare considering the amount of effort and money that went into the project. The bad news is that people might be loving it a little too much as servers are DYING out there. Some of the more popular US and EU servers have queues before you can join the game, and sometimes those queues last for up to two hours.

It’s an odd notion, standing in a digital queue before you can play a game you’ve purchased, but I’ve never really been down with the whole MMO thing so maybe it’s part and parcel during the early days of a new title? Be that as it may, it must be pissing off a few people. The bad news is that according to the game’s senior online community manager Stephen Reid, those virtual queues are going nowhere.

Posted by Miklós Szecsei Dec 23, 2011

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Activision court case is go!

Cast your minds back a good couple of months and you’ll recall the ruckus that was caused when West and Zampella left Activision citing non-payment of money owed to them. Remember? Yeah, they’re the Call of Duty guys from Infinity Ward who walked out / were fired depending on how you look at it. Basically Activision accused them of insubordination and breaching contracts of “commitment to loyalty” and kicked them out. West and Zampella say that they were dismissed unfairly after wanting payment owed to them by the mega publisher. Basically, it got messy!

Then West and Zampella shacked up with Activision’s biggest rival: Electronic Arts. Things got even messier! Now Activision is accusing EA of interfering and making matters worse so they’ve taken the matter to court.

EA along with West and Zampella’s lawyers attempted to get the whole ordeal sorted out by a summary judgement. This means that they wanted the matter to be handled quickly by one judge. That request has been denied and as such the entire court case will go ahead with juries and the works. It’s going to be a long, drawn out process that’ll start on 7 May 2012. Activision is claiming $400 million for contract interference.

Source: Kotaku

Posted by Miklós Szecsei Dec 23, 2011

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