Archive for the ‘Videogames’ Category

The Escapist: A Two-Year Retrospective

Saturday, December 20th, 2008

August 22nd marked my two-year anniversary as a News Reporter for The Escapist Magazine. Hitting the two-year mark at the end of my high school and adolescence has made me look back on my time there. I’ve also been asked a few times about the back story behind my joining of the team, and figured I could lay it all out in one memoir post.

The story of my time and many others at the Escapist begins back at Gamers With Jobs, a mature gaming forum with the funniest, most intelligent group of writers I’ve met online. The contributors to GWJ have gotten published in many of the major industry publications, including The Escapist.

I originally found the site via Slashdot, the web home of geeks everywhere, some three years ago. I came from Slashdot, but I stayed for the podcast, the now defunct Gamers With Jobs Radio, hosted by ex-TechTV producer Russ Pitts and GWJ Founder Shawn Andrich. After being a decently active poster, the site’s founders, Shawn Andrich and Sean Seands, announced the launch of the Press Pass, GWJ’s own game news site, and they were looking for writers. Having a lot of spare time during the summer of 2006, I applied.
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Play games on Logan Frederick

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Posted in Escapist, Videogames | 4 Comments »

Giant Realm and Google Android

Wednesday, September 24th, 2008

**Note: Technical difficulties are delaying the Economics of the Candidates series. I’m doing my best to hurry the process.**

Expanding beyond the world of Escapist writing, I have landed a position as an occasional editorialist for Giant Realm, a site for “Stuff That Doesn’t Suck.”

With such a descriptive caption, one might not understand that it’s a growing editorial portal with plenty of entertaining articles about music, movies, technology and gaming, all interests of ours. I joined Giant Realm to work for my former Escapist editor Joe Blancato, who left to become this site’s Editor-in-Chief. Joe’s an entertaining guy, promising some great content and making this site worth visiting.

My first story is details Google’s Android project, an open-source phone operating system that will debut with T-Mobile this year. I could explain more on my site, but I figure I’ll pimp Giant Realm and ask you to read the blurb below and then go read the full article:

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Play games on Logan Frederick

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Posted in Giant Realm, Videogames | 1 Comment »

Funcom Employee Fired for Cybersex in Conan

Monday, August 11th, 2008

From a news story I wrote today at The Escapist:

A bit of online, in-game sex has resulted in the rapid unemployment of one Funcom employee.

An unnamed Game Master for Funcom’s Age of Conan has been caught by an in-game passerby having internet nookie with another player.

After player who claimed to be a real-life female summoned a male Game Master, they traveled to a remote location in the world and began to describe innuendo-laden sexual acts. The resulting banter may be the most scandalous game-related sex act since San Andreas’s “Hot Coffee.”

…

Candy: You’re just as kinky as me
Candy: Infact you’re so kinky, you just cybered with a dude :P
Candy shouts: THIS IS SPARTA
|GM|: then when you are really hot and needing more I can reposition and slide my wet tongue up your face and do small circles again around your belly button and then let my tongue trail down your chin.
|GM|: oh that would really be not good lol
Candy: Love you =]
Candy: By the way, I’ve been fapping to this the whole time.
|GM|: lol why did you want this then lol you gay?
|GM|: are you serious?
Candy: Serious about what?
|GM|: um what’s fapping (not up to par on the ling) lol
Candy: I was joking about the fapping, but I am indeed a dude.
|GM|: lol ok.
|GM|: Glad I put my clothes back on lol
Candy: Yeah probably a good idea. I have aids.

For the rest of this article, visit The Escapist Magazine, where I report video game news Monday through Friday.

Play games on Logan Frederick

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Posted in Escapist, Videogames | 5 Comments »

E3 2008

Tuesday, July 15th, 2008

It may be losing audiences to the Tokyo Game Show and the Penny Arcade Expo. It’s organizer, the ESA, is still strapped with management troubles. Yet there is still no question that the only convention in the games industry that builds hype, garners attention, and gets its own editorial section on every gaming site is still the Electronic Entertainment Expo.

Every year, gamers worldwide wait for the press conferences from the big three hardware, first-party companies to announce their next great projects. With each year, E3 gets smaller as more developers back out of displaying their unfinished wares at the show, but even this year, there are some goodies to gab about.

Below is a breakdown of the major news from this year’s E3 by each of the console creators:

Nintendo:

  • Wii Motion Plus- An attachment to the bottom of the Wiimote that allows for one-to-one movement sensing. For example, a lightsaber game will allow you to weild the Wiimote and the sword will move in precise tandem with your hand motions.
  • That lightsaber game I just mentioned? It’s real, along with other mini-games in the new Wii Sports Resort.
  • Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars for the DS
  • Animal Crossing for the Wii with internet voice chat via packaged microphone
  • WiiMusic allows for easy playing of more musical instruments than Activision and Harmonix could ever include in Rock Band or GH

Microsoft

  • Netflix on Xbox LIVE allows for downloadable movie rentals from the 360
  • New Xbox LIVE Dashboard features animated, Mii-like avatars, slicker iTunes-ish design
  • ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE SHOW: Final Fantasy XIII for the Xbox 360 simultaneously with the PS3.

Sony

  • Sony starts a video download service for the PS3, a good year or two behind Microsoft
  • MAG (Massive Action Game) will be an online shooter allowing for up to 256 players per match. Let’s see if it lags or not.
  • God of War III confirmed but no real info revealed.

Fill the rest of your E3 hunger at The Escapist’s E3 2008 Coverage.

Play games on Logan Frederick

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Posted in Videogames | 7 Comments »