The Senior Producer behind Battlefield Heroes the upcoming Play 4 Free game from DICE and EA has weighed in with his thoughts on the recent debate surrounding the PC and the grave. Ben Cousins has some strong feelings on this issue and he is adamant that the PC is not dying, in fact he is of the school of thought that thinks the PC is leading a new major stage of growth for video gaming.

“If you look at the amount of PCs that are out there, we’re talking hundreds and hundreds of millions; if you look at the amount of PS3s and 360s, we’re talking tens of millions, barely. So, absolutely, people think that the PC is dying, but that’s a crazy idea…

it really feels like, to me, that we’re on the cusp of another expansive period of growth, between the DS and the Wii audiences, and there’s also an opportunity on the PC now.

PCs are everywhere — there are hundreds of thousands of internet cafes in India, and this is a poor country that soon will have a completely global, online connected world, for which games will be completely different.”

Read his extremely detailed interview with Gamasutra right here.

It may have taken a short while but my preview of Left 4 Dead has been published on HalfLife2.net and in it I say such things as:

Four Survivors, five big monsters, countless Infected, this is Left 4 Dead, the upcoming game from Turtle Rock studios, the latest addition to the Valve family. Left 4 Dead is destined to be the ultimate in cooperative survival first person shooters. Combining some of the best gaming elements ever to grace the PC, Left 4 Dead is a game destined to change the face of PC gaming as we know it.

This preview was intended to incorporate information from an interview with members of the Left 4 Dead team…but alas somewhere along the lines that interview has fallen through the cracks and seems to have disappeared.

Anyway read the preview of Left 4 Dead right here.

Quick note about the new banner. The design was done by my good friend DigiQ8 and the code implementation was done by The Green Bunny. There may be some other changes over the next few weeks, but that will depend on what you, the readers want to see.

=]

Edit – I know there are some issues with the banner still, bear with me and they should be sorted soon.

According to an upcoming interview with PC Zone, Chris Taylor the man behind the Supreme Commander games has revealed that the one thing stopping development of Supreme Commander is a lack of PC power.

In a sneak peak of the interview on CVG Chris Taylor says this:

“I’ve been told by my engineers that for Supreme Commander 2, I don’t have enough memory in a PC with 4GB of RAM to have more factions”.

“I’m like, ‘That’s insane!’, so we’ve got to work that one out”, he continued.

“We’ll return to the SC universe again,” Taylor went on to reveal, “but we’ll just have to see when that day is. Maybe when everybody has 64-bit processors…”

Which is really quite shocking when you think about it. Supreme Commander required a huge amount of power when it originally came out, it was one of the first games to fully utilize Dual Core set-ups. To hear that Supreme Commander 2 would require 4GB of RAM and 64-bit processors we can quite safely go ‘wow.’

That is the heading of a job listing on Star Now a British job listing site which deals with newspapers, actors and more.

The job listing at hand contains the following information;

A national newspaper wants your story and will pay hundreds of pounds to the right person.

Write a few lines about how computer games turned you to crime and if it’s something we like, we’ll call you straight back.

While there is no mention of paper running this advert it is very convenient that the job listing appeared on the 27th of March. That was the day that the Byron Review was published.

This is highly disconcerting that a newspaper, regardless of quality, is willing to advertise so blatantly for people to send in stories which will most likely be false, of how computer games turned them to crime. This is easily something which can be used to create an alarmist, over the top headline that will target and damage the reputation of the gaming industry.

Disgusting to see this kind of thing occurring even though we all know it happens. If anyone sees a headline about ‘Games turned me to the Mob’ or such like in any British papers then it should be considered with the utmost caution.

via Kotaku.

Most people now have had time to sit back, relax with a cup of tea or a pint of beer and read through it all. So just a few follow ups regarding the Byron Report.

First off I would like to direct everyone to John Walker’s very good piece regarding the Byron Report on Rock, Paper, Shotgun. With a rating of 8/10 John thinks that the report is pretty darn good!

I have to agree with John, the report does make a lot of sense and presents a good balanced take on the issue of video gaming and the internet in todays society. That is unlike The Times which lost credibility in my eyes for being pretty crap in their coverage of the report.

Secondly we have Seniath who takes a look at the increasing confusion that will occur with the dual-rating system that Dr Byron recommended in her report.

And I agree with young (or slightly older) Seniath, the plans that Dr Byron has set out for using both the BBFC rating and PEGI rating systems are just going to further confuse parents. This is where the report falls down in my mind as Dr Byron sets out in the report to help stop the confusion for many parents, but yet makes a recommendation which will just further the confusion.

But still, the report was generally very good, but as we all know it is up to Gordon Brown et al to pick and chose what they want from the report and use it to their own ends. Hopefully they don’t ruin it all.

With the Red Alert 3 Beta seemingly drawing ever closer something has stirred with a classic from the Command and Conquer series.

A new EALA backed Red Alert 2 tournament has been confirmed and is due to start on the 1st of April. Strike-Team are using their XWIS servers (the official EA sponsored WOL servers for Red Alert 2) to host the tournament that will last two months.

Prizes will range from a spot in the Red Alert 3 beta to a $250 online gift certificate and a free copy of Red Alert 3 when it ships.

To take part you simply have to boot up Red Alert 2, go to the internet tab and chose a nickname and a password (8 characters exactly) and you will then be good to go!

For more information on this head over to Strike-Team

There is a fine line between success and failure in games where getting a big score or appearing on a leader board are the driving features of the game. Games like Peggle have done fantastically well with this format, The Club however failed to perform as well as it could have.

Fortunately we have a new game to add to the list of successes, that is Red Lynx’s Trials 2 Second Edition. Trials 2 SE is based on the earlier Trials games and probably some even older imitators which I have never heard of or played. Trials 2 SE is the latest edition to the franchise, it is a heavily revised version of Trials 2 offering loads of new features and better chances for gaming fun.

Read the rest of this entry

The long awaited Byron Review has been published. This report has been carried out by Dr Tanya Byron and was commissioned by the UK Government.

The report is entitled ‘Safer Children in a Digital World’ and takes a look at the internet and video games and their impact on society and children today.

Dr Byron has presented a string of recommendations to the government on both the internet and video games.

Read the rest of this entry

The next major update for Team Fortress 2 has been dated for the week of the 20th April according to Shacknews.

A specific date has not been mentioned, but with Valve that is to be expected. The update is slated to feature the new game type and one new map, Payload and Badlands respectively.

Also possible to feature in the upcoming update is the Medic unlockable items. While the specifics regarding the Medic changes are still up in the air there are planned to be three new items. These will be selectable in a new character loadout screen.

Shacknews