Video Games

Joining previous bans of pc games Carmagedon, Grand Theft Auto and Postal which all garnered 18+ “adults only” ratings in Brazil, now first-person shooter Counterstrike and MMORPG Everquest join the ban list. Since 01/17/2008 a federal judge in Goiás has begun confiscating copies of the games, enforcing a ban that was legislated last fall. Other provinces are not seizing the games.

Kotaku also reports that Counterstrike “in the vision of specialists, teaches war techniques” and that Everquest “takes the player to total nonsense and heavy psychological conflicts, because the quests he receives may be good or bad.”

More amusingly, Everquest is not even officially sold in Brazil, and the offensive Counterstrike content where “Rio de Janeiro drug dealers kidnap and take to a slum three UN representative s” and “the police invade the place and are welcomed with bullets” refers to a user created map, CS_rio. Lol, it’s ok Brazil, we have politicians like that too in America; they’re called Hillary Clinton.

EA Games and Namco Bandai have officially stated that their online RPG Hellgate: London will be released this summer.  The graphics look amazing.  I hope they release a demo soon.  Here’s the press release:

EA and Namco Bandai Games America Announce Summer 2007 Ship Window for Hellgate: London

Hotly-Anticipated Action-RPG From Flagship Studios Set to Heat up PCs This Summer
LAS VEGAS –(Business Wire)– Jan. 8, 2007 Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:ERTS) and NAMCO BANDAI Games America Inc. today announced a summer 2007 worldwide ship window for the highly-anticipated online action RPG Hellgate: London(TM), the first original PC title from premier developer Flagship Studios.

“We are all committed to making Hellgate: London absolutely the best game possible,” said Bill Roper, CEO of Flagship Studios. “The anticipation surrounding the game is immense and we are looking forward to its launch being a truly worldwide event.”

Hellgate: London combines the depth of role-playing games and the action of first-person shooter titles, while offering infinite playability with dynamically generated levels, items, enemies and events. The player creates a heroic character, completes quests, and battles through innumerable hordes of demons to advance through experience levels and branching skill paths. A robust, flexible skill and spell system, highly customizable appearances, and a massive variety of randomly generated equipment allow players to create their own unique hero.

Here are some more exclusive screenshots of Hellgate: London:

Perhaps “bonanza,” a word that literally means “an extremely large amount,” is the only word that can fully encompass the extent to which Blizzard is banning customers who violate their Terms of Use.  In the month of May alone, they banned over 30,000 accounts that were using third-party programs to farm gold and disrupt equilibrium in many other ways.  Furthermore, perhaps the connotations of the word “bonanza,” which include “profitable” and “rewarding,” are also accurate speculations as to the motives of Blizzard.  Cutting 30,000 accounts assuredly lessens Blizzard’s band-width and maintanence costs, and the 5-digit banning marathon in May leaves us wondering if Blizzard’s employees have a banning quota.

(Bruce Woodcock. MMOGCHART.COM)

MMOG Chart has released updated figures concerning the state of the MMOG market, that is, a comparitive ratio of the number of subscribers of many MMOG to the whole MMOG market.  It turns out, to little surprise that Blizzard’s World of Warcraft (WoW) dominates the free market.  But the extent to which WoW has possession of the market is quite startling.  Holding 50.6% of all MMOG subscribers (indicated blue in the above graphic), WoW has an overbearing, exclusive grip on the market.

Check out www.pro-g.co.uk/media/screens/1536/0/ for more Neverwinter Nights 2 screenshots!