Beijing Eedoo successfully launched a multimedia entertainment console in the mainland market in April last year. But the company has changed the product name several times in order to avoid sensitive issues.

Jack Luo, chief executive officer of Beijing Eedoo, insisted his company is selling a "sports and entertainment machine", rather than a game console, to Chinese families.

Rumors have circulated in the Chinese media that some international companies have already sensed the government's changing attitude. They hope to figure out the Chinese authorities' intentions so they can make a rapid response, analysts said.

 

Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE), a subsidiary responsible for Sony's PlayStation business, set up a branch in South China's Guangdong province in June last year. The Guangdong branch will conduct training and research and development work for Sony.

 

Microsoft introduced its Kinect, a controller-free game console, to the Chinese mainland in October last year. However, Zhang Yaqin, chairman of Microsoft Corp's Asia-Pacific Research and Development Group, said Kinect is not used for games in China but for other purposes, such as medical treatment and education.

Lachowicz uses salty language in some of the comments, but someone needs to sit the Maine GOP down and explain the difference between fantasy and reality. Every day, millions of people engage in simulated video game violence without committing any real-world violence. By suggesting a World of Warcraft hobby should disqualify someone for office—and implying that voters are too dumb to tell the difference between virtual and real violence—the party is only embarrassing itself.

It's worth noting that the average American watches more than 30 hours of television per week. Many other Americans spend their evenings and weekends at the golf course. Yet it's hard to imagine anyone suggesting that devoting 22 hours per week to those hobbies made a candidate too lazy to hold elected office.

"I want you!!! ...to enjoy the Mists of Pandaria Persian-free."

Last week, a user claiming to be from Iran posted on an official World of Warcraft forum to report that the game was inaccessible. A Blizzard employee responded to the thread on Saturday, writing that "United States trade restrictions and economic sanction laws prohibit Blizzard from doing business with residents of certain nations, including Iran."

"This week, Blizzard tightened up its procedures to ensure compliance with these laws, and players connecting from the affected nations are restricted from access to Blizzard games and services," the employee said.

You can have your rials back when you pry them from our cold dead fingers...
Image source. CC BY 2.0

When you don't put out a demo, some people will start asking questions… is it because the game isn't any good and the developer is afraid people will find out? Did they run out of time and the lack of a demo is a sign that the game is sloppy and unfinished? You don't want players asking those questions -- you want them trying out your awesome game and telling everyone they know about it.

As developers working on the oft-mundane, daily tasks required in making a piece of software, we often lose sight of the fact that there are also many players who love our work. For them the opportunity to talk with someone that worked on their favorite game is incredibly exciting (something we are occasionally reminded of when we get to meet the creators of our favorite games!).

Players like having ownership. It's one of the reasons why they're playing games (an active form of entertainment) rather than experiencing a self-contained work in another medium. The absolute best way to hand over the keys to your game is to make it moddable. Many of the most beloved and long-lasting games of all time are also highly moddable, and their communities live on long after the last official update. Why? Because the players took ownership and had a vested interest in the longevity and overall success of the game. This sort of relationship between player and game is only possible when the players have the power to reshape the game to their liking.

Ah, the elephant in the room. I’ll just put it this way: if the CIA can get hacked, you’re not going to be able to prevent your game from being cracked. Sorry. You can't stop piracy. Focus on building up a fanbase and higher sales through goodwill instead of trying to bend the internet to your will. If you're spending a ton of effort trying to "win the war" on piracy, then you're wasting resources you could have been used to make better games. The reason why studios like Blizzard and Valve are so successful and beloved is because they focus on delivering the best games possible, time and money be damned. Don't make enemies of paying customers by making them jump through hoops. As history shows us, in most wars there are no winners -- only losers.

We must ensure online video game systems do not become a digital playground for dangerous predators. That means doing everything possible to block sex offenders from using gaming networks as a vehicle to prey on underage victims.

While the intent here is admirable, schemes like this one do very little to keep children safe and trample on the right to free speech and expression.

And the problem this initiative is trying to solve is almost non-existent. Children are almost always abused by people they know – a friend or family member – not by people they interact with while playing video games online.

At Microsoft, we continually evaluate ways to manage safety for our 40 million Xbox Live members and particularly for children on our service. Our partnership with the Office of the New York Attorney General helps further this cause.

The Nieman Journalism Lab got some details on how the game was created, including the fact that it's a fairly simple adaptation of another open source game. Jon Huang, the man behind the NYT version, sounds like a guy who really understands and embraces the potential of open sharing:

“I give all the credit to the guys behind Kick Ass. They’re a really excited pair of 18-year-old twins in Sweden,” Huang told me Wednesday. “I love that’s how the Internet works these days.”

Kick Ass is the open source game that made the Times’ interactive possible. It’s essentially a bookmarklet that allows you to wreak havoc on any given site you find yourself on. It was a perfect fit for the the theme of Sam Anderson’s Sunday magazine story, which examines the rise of games like Angry Birds, Plants vs. Zombies, and others that inhibit a world very different from what we might traditionally think of as regular video games.

They also rightly praise Huang and the NYT for their creative use of technology and multimedia to enhance journalism—though, it seems worth pointing out that the more the game enhances the message of the article, the more it paradoxically weakens it as well: by using a completely pointless but addictive game found on github to improve a story, they've proven that such toys can have uses beyond what is immediately apparent.

"On Tuesday afternoon, I called a representative of the show with a few simple practical questions, but she seemed generally stressed out and said something vague about the show and not wanting any problems before she hung up," says Troberg.

I thought it was a bit strange, but in the afternoon, the pieces fell into place when the fair manager, Bear Wengse, phoned me and kindly, but firmly, announced that the Pirate Party was no longer welcome at the fair.

Wengse informed Troberg that the exhibition is a meeting place and not a venue for political conflict, and the party's presence could cause problems, particularly since some of their work "could be perceived as criminal."

Shanda will set up its own server in the same geographical area in hopes of luring the private server’s users over to a legitimate Shanda game. Shanda may even rope the operator of the former private server into helping promote the licensed game.

The other prong of Shanda’s strategy against private servers acknowledges user demand for the sort of games they offer—where the rules can be changed and players can level up without weeks of effort.

For example, Shanda is developing a game platform called World Zero that will allow users to create their own game world and modify its rules, Tan said. A partner is also developing a game called “Jue Zhan Shuang Cheng” (roughly: “Decisive Battle of the Two Cities”) that imitates private server rules—allowing users to level up very quickly and engage in battles against other powered-up characters.

"Amazon believes it is censorship not to sell certain books simply because we or others believe their message is objectionable."

The company recently implemented a Super Rewards "offer wall." Like in popular Facebook games like Farmville, the offer wall allowed users to fill out surveys and participate in other marketing efforts in exchange for Turbine points, which could be used in game for goods and services. Except judging from posts to the Turbine forums, users weren't pleased to learn that their account name and email were being sent to Super Rewards just for visiting the page -- and some of the early offers wound up being "questionable," even according to a Turbine forum statement. Despite a few changes, customers continued to complain and Turbine wound up tearing down the wall -- "for now":

"Based on your feedback, we're stepping away from the ‘Offer' category for now. We'll keep exploring alternate ways for players who want points to get them. We'll also continue to innovate in pricing and accessibility because that's who we are. As of today, the Offer Wall is coming down. We'll collect all the feedback we've received over the last few days and will use it to guide future decisions."

It's great that Turbine was willing to listen to customer feedback and pull back from (or revise) an offer that was annoying, though it seemed easy enough for users to avoid these kinds of offers if they wanted. The company still seems to be doing quite well by selling a revolving array of specialized in-game loot and additional adventures, though there's also a fine balancing act at play between offering users worthy, compelling content -- and pushing microtransactions to the point where they frustrate and annoy the userbase. That said, many gamers seem perfectly eager to pay a lot of money for relatively little; Blizzard Entertainment recently earned millions in fairly short order by selling users a $25 horse -- which offered players' in-game characters no additional in-game character bonus.

Someone would pose a question -- like what sort of potions a high-class priest ought to carry around, or how to defeat a particular monster -- and another would post a reply, offering data and facts gathered from their own observations. Others would jump into the fray, disputing the theory, refining it, offering other facts. Eventually, once everyone was convinced the theory was supported by the data, the discussion would peter out.