If you thought you knew everything about Blizzard, think again. Methinks someone will have to update the company's Wikipedia page soon, for while Blizzard Entertainment's top dogs took to the stage at DICE 08, they revealed the company's history in a segment called "From Developer to Worldwide Publisher." And with the reminiscing came a little eye-opener: a list of games they've cancelled over the 17 years of their existence.

 

There was quite a buzz when some sources used the Wikipedia Scanner created by a college graduate to track users that try to modify Wikipedia entries. One worth taking note of was Electronic Arts' page which was supposedly edited more than once by an employee from EA. Turns out the stories were true, and EA even talked to GamesIndustry.biz about it.

An EA spokesperson explained that the company sometimes updates websites like Wikipedia to "ensure accuracy of their own corporate information." Reasons on why they were attempts to cover the tracks of EA founder Trip Hawkins - something that the Wikipedia community will not allow in some conditions - and to change a few lines about lawsuits charged against EA were still left in the dark.

However, the spokesperson did state, "EA has sent a correction to Yahoo Finance when they had misspelled the name of an EA executive." Trip Hawkins, who was almost wiped off from the pages of Wikipedia for reasons unknown, is currently on vacation and has yet to give his input on the matter.

Website Shack News did quite a lot of detective work to find out that there's something going on behind Electronic Arts' Wikipedia pages. Shack News is claiming that multiple attempts to erase EA founder Trip Hawkins' information from the Wiki have been tracked down to be from EA's Redwood headquarters area.

Using the Wikipedia Scanner, they found out that a modification - done back in November 20, 2006 to remove Hawkins' name from EA's "key people" section on the company's Wikipedia page - was done using a computer with the supposed IP from EA. The same user also removed the references for Hawkins and took away a paragraph about the big man's business plan.

A couple of months after, someone using the same IP tried to remove Hawkins' name from the "History" section. Strange enough, the reference for him was back on the page. Some other changes by who we can assume as the same user, include removing some paragraphs from "Criticism" section and putting a spin on the lawsuit filed by overworked, under-compensated employees to make EA look a little better.

For those who have been waiting for the release date announcement of BlackSite: Area 51, we have reports of a possible ETA. Our internet hamsters have found three sites with the same placeholder date for the upcoming video game from Midway Studios Austin.

GameStop and EBGames (naturally) agrees on one placeholder date for BlackSite: Area 51 for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC; Wikipedia also shows that same date. They all show a September release, September 3 to be exact. Hmm... We couldn't find an announcement for the original release date, though ThreeSpeech has also taken a swing for the Europe release: September 14.

We'll keep an eye out for that official announcement, until we find one, we'll pigeonhole this article in the Rumor bin. Stay tuned.

Bethesda Softworks' upcoming new entry to the Fallout franchise is definitely one of the games to watch out for next year, and since every single Fallout fan - including those of us here at QJ.NET - are getting downright rabid for more information about the game, we'll try to keep this as short and sweet as possible.

Without further ado, here are a few more details about the game.

• As we mentioned before, the game starts with your character's birth. After choosing what your character will look like at 19 (what, no age choice?), you get the "moving around" tutorial once you hit the age of 2. At the age of 10, you get the combat and game menu tutorial. At 16, you take a test to get bonuses to attributes you seem to best fit. At 19, you finally get to go out of the Vault to look for your missing daddy.
• Skill choices will be more important than ever. Choosing certain main skills can close off some quests entirely.
• The third-person combat view will be similar to the one used in Resident Evil 4
  
• Radiation is present almost everywhere in the world outside the Vault. You can regain health by consuming food, cola and water, but you should keep an eye on the rad level of these items, especially the water.
• Doctoring will once again play a big part in Fallout 3, as the broken bones and similar bodily harm you get during battles can only be healed by a doctor or by using a surgeon's kit. You should get these healed as soon as possible as they give you penalties such as not being able to run or getting a huge hit to your accuracy.
  

The Wikipedia entry for Fallout 3 also mentions that Karma titles gained in the Xbox 360 version of the game will grant corresponding Xbox Live Achievements. Remember, Fallout 3 is coming Fall 2008 for PC, PS3, and Xbox 360. Start counting down the days.

Orson Scott Card, author of Ender's Game (the Hugo Award winner and Nebula Award winner), is a recovering game addict - or at least that's one interpretation you can give his interview over at Gaming Today. Ender's Game is being turned into a movie by Warner Brothers, and at the same time Orson Scott Card is open to the possibility of his book becoming a video game.

For those not familiar with Ender's Game, just understand that it's one of the best sci-fi books ever written (in our honest opinions). A fast-paced story about violence, evil, war, and leadership. It's required reading, or so Wikipedia claims, at the Marine Corps University at Quantico.

And if it's good enough for the US Marines, it should be good enough for you gamers out there, right? Anyway, back to the interview. Orson Scott Card talked about being addicted to gaming:

The weird thing was that even when I wasn't playing, I felt a tremendous anxiety. I had responsibilities - there were cities waiting for me to tell them what to build! Now, I'm not insane. My conscious mind knew that it was just a game, and when I wasn't running the program, nothing was happening at all. But I invested so much tension in the playing of the game that it didn't go away when I left the computer. The call of duty was still there.

The interview also tackled what goes into writing a story for video games. Card said:

Games CAN'T have the kind of storylines that movies and books have, or they wouldn't be playable. ... What makes a game work is the opposite of what makes a story work. In a story, you are seeking to find out what really happened - why people do what they do, what the results of their choices are. ... In a game, the opposite illusion must be created. Even though most games absolutely force you to follow preset paths, the gamewrights try to give you the illusion that you are making free choices (even though you are actually, in almost all games, still being channeled through certain puzzles with fixed solutions).

As for Ender's Game, it won't just be one game in Card's vision:

• The Battle Room. This pivotal set in the book can be several game modules in real life.
• Space war games. The three wars (back in Mazer's time all the way to Ender's time).
• Story-based games. Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow.
• MMORPG. This one is based on the Battle School in Ender's Game.
• The Fantasy Game. The "mind game" from the novel.
• The Hive Queen. It's like Civilization (a game franchise that Card was addicted to).
• Post-war war. Card describes this as being like Risk.

Well, Mr. Card, there are quite a few fans here at QJ.NET who would be first in line to get a game that follows the Hegemon.

IGN reports that Ubisoft has launched a new website at rev64.com which appears to be a teaser for a new Tom Clancy title. The interactive site features a kind of radio voice over, a scrolling information ticker, and a few clickables that trigger some new audio clips.

The site also includes the familiar Soldier logo, which IGN tags as a Rainbow Six logo. However, a quick look at the packshot for Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2 shows that it has actually become synonymous with pretty much ALL Tom Clancy titles.

So, what is it? We're guessing that it's either a whole new title or a kind of compilation of all the Tom Clancy games. The links found on the site mention a "Ghost Leader" and a "Splinter Cell", among others, leading us to believe that this new title will somehow bring all of the Tom Clancy teams together in one large campaign.
The game also looks like it'll be set somewhere in in a near-future Europe or, possibly, Eurasia. The voice over mentions a war going on in Europe. The 2026 Stockholm Winter Games is also mentioned, which would make the game take place in or after that particular year, and the mention of Korean teams, UEFA, and other European game leagues adds to the whole Eurasian flavor.

The ticker on the left side of the site also mentions that the subject has "distaste, enmity, antipathy for dialects of Slavic descent." Slavic dialects, according to Wikipedia, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia. The EEC logo on the side of the ticker could also mean European (or Eurasian) Economic Community, and there is mention of reverse immigration into Asia.

We'll bring you guys more details on this as they surface.

This one bit is a little tricky. It came to our attention that there's a site called HalfLife.com. Now this should not be confused with Valve's Half-Life.com - but that's exactly where the issue lies.

The owner of the site, not the one intended for the game, is currently selling the domain name for US$ 1,000,000. Immediately, the idea cybersquatting comes to mind.

To those who are not in the know, cybersquatting is "defined by the U.S. federal law as registering, trafficking in, or using a domain name with bad-faith intent to profit from the goodwill of a trademark belonging to someone else" (Wikipedia).

We went to the site and found out that "HalfLife" is actually a "A Musical Comedy About the End of the Universe". It strengthens the thought that the owner is indeed cybersquatting, yes? Well, not really, especially after you make a whois search.

HalfLife has been in used since December of 1998, just one month after the original game was released. If you ask us, it looks like an amusing coincidence more than anything. It would be good to know, though, how all these pans out in the future.

On an almost completely different note, Half-Life 2 (PC, 360, PS3) will be coming out by winter of 2007.

Given the recent spread of the God of War II sex mini-game video and the probability that you're reading this after however way you managed to celebrate Valentines, now seems to be a good time to try to see how sex is included in our favorite pastime: videogames.

This article will look at the many ways game developers, and sometimes even players, translate/insert all things pheromone/hormone-induced into pixels seen on our monitors. We'll try to see why it's there and why gags like "hot coffee" are an inevitability.

If you're a puritanical prude, now would be a nice time to skip over this article. That aside, on to the big question: Why, oh why is there so much sex in videogames?

Get the rest of the article after the Jump!

 

Founded in 1994 due to nationwide furor over violence in videogames (no GTA at the time kiddies, the big guns were Mortal Kombat and Night Trap), the Interactive Digital Software Association is set to enforce regulation of the gaming industry via a mandatory ratings system. Moreover, the IDSA served as a unified voice to represent their collective interests to the American public and government.

IDSA quickly gave birth to two things known to all gamers: the Entertainment Software Ratings Board and the Electronic Entertainment Expo. The company, which we've known as the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) since 2003,  has spent the last 13 years fending government regulation, fighting piracy, and serving as the industry's face.

However, the ESA does a little more than that - and they spend for more than just what has been mentioned. A Gamespot feature sheds light on just how much the ESA has to to spend in lobbying just to get the government to listen (or see it their way, lobbying is after all a legalized form of pseudo-bribery).

The total tally? In 2005 they spend US$ 2 million in federal lobbying efforts, and from the looks of things, they're set to exceed that in 2006. They're spending more than the Motion Picture Association of America. What's good about this is (despite the spending for online gambling and other debatable endeavors), a lot of the money goes to efforts that we all could safely call, gamer-centric.

If you want a better breakdown on how much they're spending, you can check out our "Read" link below. We warn you though, it's a bit closer to Wikipedia entry than a feature, but overall it's very informative. Makes you appreciate the ESA more for spending so much just so that GTA isn't deemed illegal to play.