Frank Olivera used to be the VP of corporate communications and public affairs for Gamestop, but recently it was found that he had been stealing money from the company and transferring it to a fake company he had created (“Cloud Communications LLC”) before transferring it to his personal bank account. The total amount stolen added up to over $1.7 million dollars, which is, according to the courts, enough for him to be sentenced to 51 months (just over four years) in prison.

On top of that, he must return the stolen funds and an extra $134,651 in additional costs.

Via Eurogamer

ESRB changes marketing requirements, details

Posted on 11 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in General Gaming, General Nintendo, News | 0 comments

“This policy addresses cross-marketing of games, not bundling products together. The fundamental goal is to ensure that the cross-promotion of products is appropriately targeted. In doing so we may consider a variety of factors including the nature of the product, audience composition of the media vehicle being used, the intended audience of the game, whether registered users are of a certain age, whether an age-gate is employed, etc.”

– ESRB Statement

– Publishers and developers can now create “General Audience” trailers for M-rated games that won’t require an age gate to watch
– If one of these is made, it must begin with a four-second statement reading “The content of this trailer has been approved for a general audience.” with a green background, similar to what you see in a movie theatre before previews
– M-rated games can now be marketed alongside lower-rated games, if the two games appeal to the same audience (ie. you can put a God of War pamphlet inside of the Uncharted game box)

Via GameInformer

Spin the Bottle targeted for May

Posted on 11 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in General Gaming, News, Wii U eShop | 0 comments

KnapNok plans to release Spin the Bottle on the Wii U eShop in May. No specific date, unfortunately, but it’ll be available in just a couple of months.

A new teaser for Spin the Bottle was released earlier today. Watch it here.

Source

EA snatches up “Supreme Heroes” domains

Posted on 11 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Gaming, News | 0 comments

EA has been snatching up domains for something called “Supreme Heroes” left and right. The company now owns Supreme-Hero.com, Supreme-Hero.org, Supreme-Heroes.org, SupremeHero.org, SupremeHeroes.com, SupremeHeroes.fr, SupremeHeroes.org, SupremeHeroesRock.org, SupremeHeroesRocks.org, SupremeHeroesSuck.org, and SupremeHeroesSucks.org. Each domain was registered on March 5.

What might EA be up to here? Could Supreme Heroes be a new game?

Source

EA: It’s “really not true” that we’ll have micro-transactions in all of our games, but all our mobile games will

Posted on 11 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in General Gaming, News, Podcast Stories | 0 comments

“I made a statement in the conference along the lines of ‘we’ll have microtransactions in our games,’ and the community read that to mean all our games, and that’s really not true. All of our mobile games will have microtransactions in them, because almost all of them are going to a world where they are play-for-free.”

– EA CFO Blake Jorgensen

It’s understandable that these two statements got lumped together, but the fact that Dead Space 3 includes micro-transactions up and down would seem to indicate that– even if it’s not 100% consistent– a lot of EA’s console games will be going this route in the future. Perhaps some will be left out, but just because they’ve now clarified their position it doesn’t indicate that they won’t use micro-transactions as a primary source of income going forward.

Via Gamespot

Various WayForward employees break off to form “Yacht Club Games”

Posted on 11 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in General Gaming, News, Podcast Stories | 0 comments

The studio behind such great games as Mighty Switch Force! and A Boy and His Blob (Wii) has lost a few of its members, as a former designer and director, a lead programmer, and a gameplay programmer have all left the company to form a studio called “Yacht Club Games”. It’s unclear whether any more employees have left WayForward, or if the new studio is any larger than just the three people, but what we do know is that they’ll be making a software announcement soon.

Rumor has it that their game will be for Android, Steam, iOS, Ouya, and Google Play– so nothing you guys will be hearing about here!

Via NWR

Ubisoft responds to PETA’s criticism of whaling mechanic in Assassin’s Creed IV

Posted on 11 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in General Gaming, News, Wii U | 0 comments

“History is our playground in Assassin’s Creed. Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag is a work of fiction that depicts the real events during the golden era of pirates. We do not condone illegal whaling, just as we don’t condone a pirate lifestyle of poor hygiene, plundering, hijacking ships, and over-the legal-limit drunken debauchery.”

– Ubisoft senior PR manager Stone Chin

Eh, that’s a fair response. Hiding behind the guise of “it’s historical!” is more or less false considering that “glorification” implies you’re stretching the truth to make things seem cooler than they were, but simply stating “sorry, it’s a game, get over it” is completely fair, and I would be obliged to agree with that sentiment! They aren’t being historical, but too bad, it’s a piece of storytelling.

Via Polygon

TT Fusion: A Skylanders-esque LEGO game won’t be happening any time soon, according to lead developer

Posted on 11 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in General Gaming, General Nintendo, News, Wii U | 0 comments

Speaking with NowGamer, TT Fusion’s lead developer for the upcoming LEGO City: Undercover has said that the studio isn’t looking at making an NFC-based, figurine-attached game using LEGO figures anytime soon, despite the facts that such an idea would clearly be ridiculously popular, and the Wii U Gamepad already has NFC technology built into it.

Perhaps the studio simply wants to release their new game first, see what kind of press it gets, and then think about doing something new and interesting like that. Something tells me they’ll be more interesting in simply making another open-world LEGO City game though.

Via NowGamer

‘Watch Dogs’ lead designer leaves Ubisoft, joins EA to work on Need for Speed

Posted on 11 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in General Gaming, News, Podcast Stories, Wii U | 0 comments

It’s unknown how reactionary this particular story should be as details are somewhat fuzzy, but here’s what’s known so far:

Jamie Keen worked at Ubisoft Montreal during the development of Far Cry 3, where he acted as lead game designer. This week, some of the gaming press took a look at his LinkedIn profile, and discovered that it lists him leaving Ubisoft Montreal in February 2012 to join up with EA and work on their upcoming Need for Speed title– many months before he finished work on Far Cry 3. Some are suggesting this is a typo, and it means to read “February 2013”. If it does, it means that he left during the development of Watch Dogs, on which he was also said to be lead designer.

If it isn’t a typo and he did leave in 2012, it means he was never lead designer on Watch Dogs and he didn’t finish work on Far Cry 3, which seems unlikely. Why he left the company in the first place is unknown, but we’ll keep you posted if this goes anywhere!

Via VideoGamer

PETA: Assassin’s Creed IV whaling mechanic is “disgraceful”

Posted on 11 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in General Gaming, News, Wii U | 0 comments

“Whaling – that is, shooting whales with harpoons and leaving them to struggle for an hour or more before they die or are hacked apart while they are still alive – may seem like something out of the history books, but this bloody industry still goes on today in the face of international condemnation, and it’s disgraceful for any game to glorify it.”

“PETA encourages video game companies to create games that celebrate animals – not games that promote hurting and killing them.

– PETA Statement

PETA is no stranger to criticizing video games– they’ve said themselves that they intentionally blow things out of proportion in order to draw attention to their legitimate cause– and today we get to hear about their opinions on Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, specifically the game’s whaling mechanic.

Whether the criticism is legitimate or not isn’t really up for debate– even PETA would likely admit (behind closed doors, of course) that going after artistic mediums isn’t always wholesome– but the question of whether the game is “glorifying” the action is still completely unknown. Plenty of games have violence, but not all of them glorify it, and we’ll have to wait and see whether this particular mechanic is made out to be a moral positive or simply a fact of life, as it was back then.

Via VideoGamer