What Would Matt Do

Go here, watch the Portal video, drool.

(as seen on IGN)

 I'm commiting a cardinal sin here and linking to IGN . Why am I doing this, you ask? Because Team Fortress 2 lives and it lives well!

(click the picture for the full size version) 

I literally must play this game as soon as possible! The level of comic violence and fun COULD be high up on the Matt cares scale! 

(as seen on /. games) 

But apparently not only is there going to be an animated Dragonlance movie, but they've already lined up the voice talent. 

That's pretty interesting. May it not suck and all of that jazz. I loved the books, at the least the first series or so. Very much like a well written D&D adventure, which it actually was based on. Good luck, Raistlin! 

These quotes of doom and gloom about episodic games are stolen from this article:

It's a broken business model," he warned the audience, claiming that games already operated on a successful episodic formula thanks to regular franchise releases and sequels. He also said that the choice to  release games piecemeal at lower prices over the web just will not work, and will turn consumers off: "It's not feasible to bring out a level every week - you'll see a lot of recycled content. Fatigue will set in, and franchise fatigue means dimishing returns."

 Despite accusations from the attending audience of developers in a Q&A that his assertions were "wrong" or "dinosaur-like", he added: "I would love to see games sell for $20 on a DVD-like model - but that won't happen in our lifetime. What scares me is people betting their business on making money out of this [episodic gaming]."

He later went on to add, I'm so very jealous we have no way of doing that and have to wait years and years in between are games and we're not making as much money as Valve is.

Ok, he didn't really say that last part, but he might of. What's the problem here? That Valve created Steam and dealt with all the backlash and bugs and so on and now they have a delivery system for episodic gaming that Epic doesn't? Is it that Valve made oodles and oodles of money by creating a game that was only 4-5 hours long and then selling it on their own system so as to get around publisher cuts? Because the idea that episodic gaming is the end of the PC gaming industry makes about as much sense as blaming computer/chip manufactures for the failure of it. Oh wait:

Rein also repeated his assertions made in MCV 385 (5/5/2006) that the PC games market is being killed off thanks to low-priced low-spec machines that are incapable of playing the latest cutting edge games, and laid the blame squarely at the feat of chip producer Intel. "There is a potential for catastrophic failure in the PC gaming market," he said. "If Intel left the PC graphics market we'd all be better off."

Ok, nevermind, Mark is just a crazy man. Yeah, damn Intel! Damn Dell! Damn them all for making Epic create engines that require the Touch of God™ to run them. It's just not fair! 

These ladies are creating a calendar of them posing like famous movie stills to create IT industry awareness…about the lack of girls in the IT industry . Is this actually going to help?

Their words:

"Statistics show us that one of the biggest barriers to entry is the perception of the industry," said Ms Bernhardt.

"We want to completely smash this by doing this in a parody way.
"We've been there, we've done that with traditional programs and we now know that it is time to do something dramatically different to appeal to a broader audience and to generate a healthy debate."

The models came from all mainland Australian states as well as South Africa, Finland and Sri Lanka. They range in age from 20 to 60 years.

"Each month includes a biography of the woman featured that month, as well as a significant date in technology history, covering leading technology women," Ms Bernhardt said.

The calendar can be bought online by visiting www.itgoddess.info.
Ms Bernhardt hopes to sell 100,000 copies worldwide and profits will be used to promote IT careers for females.

My wife's words:

 meh…I think the idea of calling it a way to attract more women to the it industry is so full of shit it stinks.

and:

 not that I have a problem with calendars….if they wanna do it ..more power to them..but cmon..at least be honest about your motivations

So what do my faithful readers (both of you) think?