Hooray!

Games for Win­dows Live is being relaunched again.

Con­sid­er­ing all the fun I had last time, I per­son­ally can’t wait for this. (more…)

Two weeks ago, I wrote a post that you might con­sider “mildly crit­i­cal”, dis­cussing the brand new Games for Win­dows Live web-based store, and the count­less ways in which it fell apart as soon as you looked at it.

Today, I went to look at their site again, as they have Deus Ex on sale, and, while it is a 10 year old game, and I already have it, I was inter­ested in see­ing if they’d opened up the store for peo­ple out­side Amer­ica and the UK yet. (more…)

Once again, Microsoft “relaunched” Games for Win­dows Live, either gam­bling that if they keep relaunch­ing the same thing, even­tu­ally every­one will just give up and start using it, or per­haps that if they keep relaunch­ing the same thing, even­tu­ally every­one will just give up and buy an XBox 360 instead. I don’t know. But it is really get­ting ridiculous.

Unlike the last time it “relaunched”, how­ever, this time it actu­ally has a new fea­ture as well: it is now pos­si­ble to view (and use) their store from a browser, or so they claim. And what’s more, games can now, appar­ently, be bought using money, actual human cur­rency, rather than imag­i­nary Microsoft Points.

In prac­tice? Not so much. (more…)

Just over a month ago, I handed in my Mas­ters The­sis. All that’s left now is an oral defense of it one of the next weeks. So what hap­pens then? I sup­pose I should find a job. A few peo­ple have asked if I am going to do a PhD, but I don’t think so. I think I’ve had enough of acad­e­mia for now. It was fun while it lasted, but I think it’s time to try some­thing dif­fer­ent. (more…)

I’m sorry. This isn’t going to be pretty. (more…)

… this comes along.

At Comic Con, if you com­mit “an act of lust” with an EA booth babe and take a pic­ture, you could win din­ner with said babes, as well as a great big pile of prizes related to the upcom­ing Dante’s Inferno. That’s right, the babes won’t just get the stan­dard behav­ior and awk­ward advances — if some­one is really obnox­ious, they get rewarded for it, and then you get to see them again socially!

What absolute moron came up with this? And how did every­one else who had to sign off on it not real­ize what a ter­ri­ble idea it is?

I must say I’m dis­ap­pointed in EA. This is just giv­ing both the games indus­try and gamers a bad name, in addi­tion to giv­ing their own employ­ees even more crappy behav­ior to deal with in a job that already exposes them to plenty of it.. That kind of misog­yny just isn’t cool.

Well, at least the reac­tions are encour­ag­ing. Let’s see how they try to wrig­gle out of this PR disaster.