Monthly Archives: December 2014
Twitch Buys GoodGame Agency, Including Evil Geniuses and Alliance eSports Teams
Not only is Twitch is in a being acquired sort of mood lately but they’re also in an acquiring sort of mood. This week, the leading online game streaming service announced that it was buying one of the top companies in eSports. Twitch announced the acquisition of the GoodGame Agency, an eSports marketing company whose portfolio includes leading eSports teams Evil Geniuses and Alliance.
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Rise of the Tomb Raider to be Published by Microsoft
Just when you thought that the controversy over bought and paid for third-party console exclusives had regained new life with the announcement that Capcom’s Street Fighter V would have console exclusivity on the PS4, the story got bigger. Not only is the sequel to 2013’s hit Tomb Raider going to have timed exclusivity on the Xbox One but publishing duties will be handled by Microsoft Studios rather IP holders Square Enix.
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Ralph Baer, The Father of Video Games, Passes Away
Ralph Baer, the man who invented the first home video game console, the Magnavox Odyssey, and who was considered the father of video games, passed away at the age of 92.
Baer was responsible for video games as we know them now. While he held over 150 patents from his work as an inventor, in gaming circles, Baer was famous for inventing the first home console. Originally dubbed the Brown Box, Baer’s console was in development in the 1960s with archive footage from 1969 showing Baer testing the device. He licensed the technology and it became the Magnavox Odyssey in 1972.
Baer’s contributions to games didn’t end there. He is also credited with creating the first light gun game called Shooting Gallery. Gamers will know that as the technology behind popular NES game Duck Hunt. Away from video games, Baer was the inventory of popular memory game Simon.
He received numerous awards during his lifetime for his work. In 2006, he was awarded the National Medal of Technology by President George W. Bush. In 2008, he was given Game Developers Choice Pioneer Award. And he was also inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
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The Death of the Day One Patch
On Monday, CD Projekt Red announced that The Witcher 3 has been delayed until May 2015. That’s the third release window for the game since it was announced. The original 2014 release window was specified down to Fall 2014 which was revised to February 2015 and most recently to May 19, 2015.
At one point in time, a game being delayed for a second time would have been met by the internet gaming community with torches and pitchforks, especially a game that is as hotly anticipated as The Witcher 3. However, reaction to the move has been mostly favourable.
After being burned too many times in a row with games that are broken or technically faulty upon launch, gamers are starting to say enough with the now standard practice of a day one patch and are looking for a return of the good old days when games were done when they were released.
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Comic Book Pull List for December 10, 2014
If there’s one thing that bugs me about my pull lists, it’s that I don’t give enough space to the smaller publishers. I would but we don’t get anything outside of your Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, IDW and Dynamite comics in small town Northern Ontario. So let’s start today’s pull list with Valiant. This week marks the launch of an internal cross-over event that sees all of their big series come together in The Valiant #1. Bonus points for being written by Canada’s Jeff Lemire.
Speaking of cross-overs, Spider-Man joins up with the X-Men at Jean Grey’s Academy. Well, I suppose that with great power comes great responsibility, whether it’s power from a genetic mutation or a spider bite. Find out how everyone co-exists in Spider-man and X-Men #1. And I can’t find any new cross-over special so how about a holiday special? I don’t remember seeing a specific holiday themed one-shot last year but DC’s trying it in Harley Quinn: Holiday Special #1.
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Tales from the Borderlands – Episode One Review: There Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked
I’ve never really been a big first-person shooter fan. Maybe it’s coming from a console background in my youth rather than PC but I was never really into FPSs. So I’ve never been into the Borderlands franchise. Sure, I’ve got some ten hours into the first game and my sister knows the franchise inside and out (she’s the FPS player in the family) but I’ve never been compelled to keep going with those games.
That being said, I’m a big fan of the last couple of years of content from Telltale Games. While I haven’t had time to get to The Wolf Among Us (though I hear it’s fantastic), The Walking Dead seasons have been absolutely fantastic so of course I’m going to pick up the next game from Telltale. So can a merger of genres and developers that may not necessarily work at first glance come together to make another Telltale and Gearbox classic?
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Game Trailers Roundup: December 8, 2014
Apparently Friday’s The Game Awards was actually not terrible. After how many years of laughable VGAs and last year’s VGX (which was only redeemable by Joel McHale undermining the whole thing), it took Keighley putting his own money on the line to get something closer to a proper awards show.
Of course, this can’t be a Keighley produced award show with a whole pile of trailers and gameplay exclusive videos. While I might run the gameplay exclusives later, I do have a whole pile of trailers today. By my count, there are 13 trailers for just released, announced or upcoming games for you to watch. Chances are you will find something to watch in here.
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YouPorn is Sponsoring An eSports Team
When popular online porn video site YouPorn said that they wanted to sponsor an eSports team, we all had a good laugh at the possibility, made the typical jokes about gamers, basements and pornography and moved on with our lives. It turns out that YouPorn was more serious that many were willing to give it credit for.
This weekend, YouPorn unveiled their new eSports team, Team YP, as it competed in the Gamergy Dota 2 tournament.
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Haven: Chosen Review
So how do we wrap-up an up and down season of a TV show? If you’re the producers of Haven, you push the reset button on the season’s main storyline, remember that there was a more compelling villain that they introduced at one point and borrowed a bit from that other Stephen King show on TV.
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eSports Weekend Calendar: December 5 – 7, 2014
The big feature in this week’s eSports Weekend Calendar is ESL’s first standalone IEM event in North America. Usually, IEM events are run at big comic or gaming conventions but IEM San Jose breaks that mould by running at San Jose’s SAP Center, home to the NHL’s San Jose Sharks. IEM San Jose has both a League of Legends tournaments with some big North American and European teams and an SC2 tournament that will hand out the first WCS points for 2015.
et geekera 